she wore kid gloves; hitherto she had only had cotton ones. Her gloves
were far too large for the little dimpled fingers, but as Betty had
told her they were to last her for years, it was all very well. She
trembled many a time, and almost turned faint once with the long
expectation of the morning. Betty might say what she liked about a
watched pot never boiling; Molly never ceased to watch the approach
through the winding street, and after two hours the carriage came for
her at last. She had to sit very forward to avoid crushing the Miss
Brownings' new dresses; and yet not too forward, for fear of
incommoding fat Mrs. Goodenough and her niece, who occupied the front
seat of the carriage; so that altogether the fact of sitting down at
all was rather doubtful, and to add to her discomfort, Molly felt
herself to be very conspicuously placed in the centre of the carriage,
a mark for all the observation of Hollingford. It was far too much of a
gala day for the work of the little town to go forward with its usual
regularity. Maid-servants gazed out of upper windows; shopkeepers'
wives stood on the doorsteps; cottagers ran out, with babies in their
arms; and little children, too young to know how to behave respectfully
at the sight of an earl's carriage, huzzaed merrily as it bowled along.
The woman at the lodge held the gate open, and dropped a low curtsey to
the liveries. And now they were in the Park; and now they were in sight
of the Towers, and silence fell upon the carriage-full of ladies, only
broken by one faint remark from Mrs. Goodenough's niece, a stranger to
the town, as they drew up before the double semicircle flight of steps
which led to the door of the mansion.

'They call that a perron, I believe, don't they?' she asked. But the
only answer she obtained was a simultaneous 'hush.' It was very awful,
as Molly thought, and she half wished herself at home again. But she
lost all consciousness of herself by-and-by when the party strolled out