She opened the carriage-door from the inside, and I got in, and off we drove.

I felt awkward, of course, but after all I was decently dressed, and I suppose I can behave like a gentleman, and--well, she sat looking at me and smiling, and I could only smile back.

Then she said she must apologise for behaving so strangely, but I was very young, and she was an old woman,--one couldn't call her that, though,--and she had taken this way of renewing her acquaintance with me.

Renewing?
But I didn't remember to have ever met her before, I said.
"Oh, yes, we have met before, but you were a little child, a baby in fact, and there's no wonder you don't remember me ?" And then she said, "I knew your mother very well." Nancy leaned forward, her lips apart.
'Queer, wasn't it?
Then she went on to say that her name was Mrs.
Damerel; had I ever heard it?
No, I couldn't remember the name at all.
She was a widow, she said, and had lived mostly abroad for a great many years; now she was come back to settle in England.

She hadn't a house of her own yet, but lived at a boarding-house; she didn't know whether to take a house in London, or somewhere just out in the country.