Ladies-In-Waiting by Kate Douglas Wiggin

Fergus Appleton thought he saw "the singing girl" of his voyage from New York one May day in Wells, where he went to study the cathedral. He noticed a hansom with a pink-clad figure in the opening, looking like a rosebud of a new and odd sort on wheels. At least, it looked like a rosebud at the moment the doors rolled back like the leaves of a calyx, and the flower issued, triumphant and beautiful. She was greeted by a tall, stout young lady, who climbed into the hansom, and the two settled themselves quickly and drove off.

Appleton's hansom followed on its own course, which chanced to be in the same direction, and he saw the slim and the stout disappear up a hilly street, at the top of which was a famous old house. He walked that way in the afternoon, having nothing better to do, but could observe no dwelling at which the two ladies might be staying. There was a pretty cottage with a long, graveled pathway leading to it, and a little sign on the locked gate reading: "Spring Cleaning. Please do not knock or ring. " Farther along was a more pretentious house, so attractive that he was sorry he had never noticed it before, for the sign "Apartments to Let" was in one of the front windows. He heard a piano in the rear somewhere, but on reaching the front door another sign confronted him: "The parlor maid is slightly deaf. If doorbell is not answered at once, please step inside and ring the dinner bell on the hall table."