Read "Limitations" by E.F. Benson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Maud Wrexham was sitting in her mother's room one morning, towards the end of July, after breakfast, telling Lady Chatham her engagements for the day. This piece of ritual was daily and invariable, and her mother spent the succeeding three-quarters of an hour in trying "to work things in," as she called it -- in other words, to manage that one carriage should drop two people in different parts of London, and call for them both again at the hour they wanted. These manœuvres usually ended in both parties concerned taking hansoms, after waiting a considerable time for the carriage to pick them up, and driving home separately, while the empty carriage, with the coachman, who was always sceptical about such arrangements, returned home gloomily about half an hour later.
"I think I shall go to Victoria and meet Arthur," Maud was just saying; "he will catch the first boat from Calais, and his train gets in about five."