“You didn’t have the assurance to suppose he’d see you?” cried Euphemia.

“No, indeed, I hadn’t,” said Pomona, “at least under common circumstances.  You may be sure I racked my brains enough to know what I should do to meet him face to face.  It wouldn’t do to go in the common way, such as ringin’ at the front door and askin’ for him, an’ then offerin’ to sell him furniter-polish for his pianner-legs.  I knowed well enough that any errand like that would only bring me face to face with his bailiff, or his master of hounds, or something of that kind.  So, at last, I got a plan of my own, an’ I goes up the steps and rings the bell, an’ when the flunkey, with more of an air of gen’ral upliftedness about him than any one I’d seen yet, excep’ Nelson on top of his pillar, opened the door an’ looked at me, I asked him,—­

“‘Is Earl Cobden in?’

“At this the man opened his eyes, an’ remarked:—­

“‘What uv it if he is?’

“Then I answers, firmly:—­

“‘If he’s in, I want yer to take him this letter, an’ I’ll wait here.’”

“You don’t mean to say,” cried Euphemia, “that you wrote the earl a letter?”

“Yes, I did,” continued Pomona, “and at first the man didn’t seem inclined to take it.  But I held it out so steady that he took it an’ put it on a little tray, whether nickel-plated or silver I couldn’t make out, and carried it up the widest and splendidest pair o’ stairs that I ever see in a house jus’ intended to be lived in.  When he got to the fust landin’ he met a gentleman, and give him the letter.  When I saw this I was took aback, for I thought it was his lordship a-comin’ down, an’ I didn’t want to have no interview with a earl at his front door.  But the second glance I took at him showed me that it wasn’t him.  He opened it, notwithstanding’, an’ read it all through from beginnin’ to end.  When he had done it he looked down at me, and then he went back up stairs a-follered by the flunk, which last pretty soon came down ag’in an’ told me I was to go up.  I don’t think I ever felt so much like a wringed-out dish-cloth as I did when I went up them palatial stairs.  But I tried to think of things that would prop me up.  P’r’aps, I thought, my ancient ancestors came to this land with his’n; who knows?  An’ I might ‘a’ been switched off on some female line, an’ so lost the name an’ estates.  At any rate, be brave!  With such thoughts as these I tried to stiffen my legs, figgeratively speakin’.  We went through two or three rooms (I hadn’t time to count ’em) an’ then I was showed into the lofty presence of the earl.  He was standin’ by the fire-place, an’ the minnit my eyes lit upon him I knowed it was him.”

“Why, how was that?” cried Euphemia and myself almost in the same breath.

“I knowed him by his wax figger,” continued Pomona, “which Jone and I see at Madame Tussaud’s wax-works.  They’ve got all the head people of these days there now, as well as the old kings and the pizeners.  The clothes wasn’t exactly the same, though very good on each, an’ there was more of an air of shortenin’ of the spine in the wax figger than in the other one.  But the likeness was awful strikin’.