Not content with this, Jimmy motored to Sandbay, and stopping at a stationer’s shop, succeeded in purchasing a local Directory.  In this he found the name of “Dobson, the Misses,” who lived at No. 8, Downside Road.  The house was named “Fairbank.”  Thither Jimmy drove at once, and few thoroughfares could have had a more sedately retired appearance.  A wide, gravelled roadway, smoothly rolled, with red-brick villas all precisely alike on one side, and yellow-brick villas, equally uniform, on the other.

There must have been fewer than the average number of children in the neighbourhood, and these must have been unusually silent and well conducted.  Such dogs as there were always went out with a lead, and often wearing neat little home-made coats, with a leather strap instead of a collar.

On almost every gate a metal label was affixed:  “No hawkers or street musicians.”  In the most sedate of the red-brick villas with the neatest front garden, lived the Misses Dobson.  If any one ever ventured to speak of them in their hearing as the “Miss Dobsons” he was certain to be corrected.  In truth, “The Misses Dobson” seemed to describe them far more accurately.

The difference between their ages was only eighteen months, and casual observers assumed that they were twins.  They invariably dressed alike, in a fashion which had become out of date in London several years before.  They never went out separately, and in order that the same ideas should penetrate their minds at the same moment, one of the pair read aloud while the other sewed and listened.

Well-to-do in the world, they were exceedingly kind to the poor, and they had never succeeded in grasping Bridget’s reasons for refusing to accept their hospitality.  This afternoon they were sitting together in their superlatively neat drawing-room, and Miss Dobson was knitting while Miss Frances was reading a novel from the circulating library.  In the middle of chapter four they were astonished to hear the unwonted sound of a motor-car, and when the sentence was finished they both rose and walked to the window.

There stood a large red car, with a chauffeur in dark-grey livery with a light-brown fur rug round his knees.  Before their astonishment permitted the remark that some one must have stopped at the wrong house, the door opened and the most demure parlour-maid in England stood nervously holding the handle.

“A gentleman in a motor-car,” said Selina.

“I think,” answered Miss Dobson, “that he must have made a mistake in the number.”

“He asked for Miss Dobson,” said Selina.  “Not knowing the name, I left him in the hall.”

“Quite right,” returned Miss Frances.

“Name o’ Clynesworth,” said Selina.

“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Dobson, “he wishes to sell something.”

“A motor-car!” remarked Miss Frances.

“I suppose we ought to receive him,” said her sister, and accordingly Jimmy was conducted to the drawing-room, where he at once began to make an almost abject apology.