"No, I haven't, Lyra. I've always just missed him somehow. He seems to have
been perpetually just gone to town, or not got back."
"Well, he's really at home now. And I don't mean at the house, which isn't
home to him, but the Works. You've never seen the Works either, have you?"
"No, I haven't."
"Well, then, we'll just go round there, and kill two birds with one stone.
I ought to show off my new phaeton to Mr. Wilmington first of all; he gave
it to me. It would be kind of conjugal, or filial, or something. You know
Mr. Wilmington and I are not exactly contemporaries, Annie?"
"I heard he was somewhat your senior," said Annie reluctantly.
Lyra laughed. "Well, I always say we were born in the same century,
_any_way."
They came round into the region of the shops, and Lyra checked her pony in
front of her husband's factory. It was not imposingly large, but, as Mrs.
Wilmington caused Annie to observe, it was as big as the hat shops and as
ugly as the shoe shops.
The structure trembled with the operation of its industry, and as they
mounted the wooden steps to the open outside door, an inner door swung ajar
for a moment, and let out a roar mingled of the hum and whirl and clash of
machinery and fragments of voice, borne to them on a whiff of warm, greasy
air. "Of course it doesn't smell very nice," said Lyra.
She pushed open the door of the office, and finding its first apartment
empty, led the way with Annie to the inner room, where her husband sat
writing at a table.
"George, I want to introduce you to Miss Kilburn."
"Oh yes, yes, yes," said her husband, scrambling to his feet, and coming
round to greet Annie. He was a small man, very bald, with a serious and
wrinkled forehead, and rather austere brows; but his mouth had a furtive
curl at one corner, which, with the habit he had of touching it there with
the tip of his tongue, made Annie think of a cat that had been at the
cream. "I've been hoping to call with Mrs. Wilmington to pay my respects;
but I've been away a great deal this season, and--and--We're all very happy
to have you home again, Miss Kilburn. I've often heard my wife speak of
your old days together at Hatboro'."
They fenced with some polite feints of interest in each other, the old man
standing beside his writing-table, and staying himself with a shaking hand
upon it.