Kitabı oku: «A Bevy of Girls», sayfa 15

Chapter Twenty Eight
Applying for a Situation

On the morrow between twelve and one o’clock, Nesta, who had no best clothes to put on, but who had to make the best of what she stood up in, as Mrs Hogg expressed it, started on her mission of inquiry to Mrs Johnston’s. Mrs Johnston lived in the high street. It was not much of a street, for Souchester was quite a tiny place; but still there were a few houses, and three or four shops, and amongst those houses was one with a hall door painted yellow, and pillars painted green. In that house lived Mrs Johnston. Nesta’s whole horizon, every scrap of her future, seemed now to be centred in Mrs Johnston. She had lain awake a good part of the night thinking about her, and making her plans. If Mrs Johnston would pay her – say ten shillings a week, she could easily manage to live quite well. She would still board with the Hoggs and take her food with them. She would soon get accustomed to the red herrings and to the half of Mrs Hogg’s bed. She would soon get accustomed to the boys, who could only articulate, as far as she was concerned, the words “Hooray” and “Hurroa.” In fact she would get accustomed to anything, and she would stay there until her family, tired out with looking for her, would cease to trouble their heads. By-and-by perhaps they would be sorry, and they would hold out the olive branch, and she would go home, but that time was a long way off.

Meanwhile all her future would depend on Mrs Johnston. She reached the house and rang the bell.

The house was not pretty, but it seemed to be immaculately neat. A girl as neat as the house itself presently opened the door. When she saw Nesta, she said:

“My missus can’t see anybody to-day,” and was about to slam the door in Nesta’s face, when that young lady adroitly slipped her foot in.

“I must see her. It is most important. It has something to do with the St. Justs,” said Nesta.

She was desperate and had to make up an excuse to secure her interview at any cost. The servant girl was impressed by the word St. Just, and telling Nesta she might stay in the hall and she would inquire, she went away to find her mistress.

Mrs Johnston’s celebrated rheumatism was at its worst that day. She was consequently more cranky than usual, and less inclined to be civil to any who wanted her.

“A girl, did you say, Mercy? Speak out, my lass. What sort of a girl?”

“A kind of lady girl, ma’am.”

“A stranger?”

“Yes; I never seen her before.”

“Did she say what she wanted?”

“I think the people from the Castle sent her, ma’am. She said it was to do with the St. Justs.”

“Why, then, for goodness’ sake show her in. I am expecting Miss Angela, and perhaps she will call some time to-day. We must have the place in apple-pie order. I hope to goodness that girl hasn’t come to say that Miss Angela can’t come. I’ve been counting on her visit more than anything.”

“In course, you have, ma’am, and no wonder. She’s a beautiful young lady.”

“Well, show the other young lady in, Mercy,” said Mrs Johnston; “but tell her that I’m bad with the rheumatics and I can’t entertain her long. If I ring the bell twice, Mercy, you will bring up the gingerbread and milk; but if I ring it three times, it will be for the gingerbread and cowslip wine, and if I don’t ring it at all, why, you are to bring up nothing. It all depends on what the young lady wants.”

How poor Nesta would have enjoyed the gingerbread and milk, let alone the gingerbread and cowslip wine which she was never to taste, for her diet at the Hoggs’ was the reverse of appetising. Try as she would she could scarcely manage it; hunger would, of course, bring her to it in time. But although she was nearly starving for her ordinary food, she was not hungry enough yet for the food which the Hoggs consumed. Mercy came back to her.

“You may come in, Miss,” she said. “It is entirely because you are a young lady from the Castle; but my missis wishes to tell you that her rheumatics are awful bad to-day. You’ll be as gentle as you can with her, Miss.”

Nesta nodded, and entered the room, the door of which Mercy held open for her.

Now, Nesta could never be remarked for her graceful or gentle movements, and she managed, in coming into the room, to excite Mrs Johnston’s quickly aroused ire, by knocking violently against a little table which held a tray full of some pretty silver ornaments. One of them was knocked down, and the whole arrangement was destroyed.

“Clumsy girl!” muttered Mrs Johnston under her breath. She looked up with a frown on her face as Nesta approached.

Mercy stooped to rearrange the silver ornaments.

“Go away, Mercy, for goodness’ sake!” snapped the old lady. “Shut the door, and remember about the bell. If I don’t ring, bring nothing whatever, Mercy. You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Mercy.

Nesta went and stood in front of Mrs Johnston.

“Take a seat, my dear,” said the good lady, for she recalled that even a clumsy visitor from the Castle was worth propitiating. “So you have come from Miss Angela St. Just. I do trust and hope that the sweet young lady isn’t going to disappoint me?”

“But I haven’t,” said Nesta, “and she didn’t send you a message.”

“But you are staying there?”

“No; I’m not.”

“Then what message have you from the St. Justs, may I ask?”

Mrs Johnston held herself very upright. Even her rheumatism gave way to her anger.

“What has brought you here, may I ask, young girl?”

“I came,” said Nesta, “because Mrs Hogg sent me.”

“Mrs Hogg? Hogg? You don’t mean Mary Hogg, the laundress?”

“I don’t know whether she’s a laundress or whether she’s not, but I am lodging there.”

Mrs Johnston sat still more upright. “I am lodging there for the present I know the St. Justs, but I am lodging there, and I want something to do in this place, and I thought perhaps you’d let me – oh, please don’t get so red in the face! Please don’t! Please hear me out. I thought perhaps you’d let me come and read to you, the same as the girl who went to America. Mrs Hogg said you wanted some one.”

“Mary Hogg shall never have one scrap of my washing again. What does she mean by sending me a total stranger? I shall request Mary Hogg to mind her own business.”

“Please, it isn’t her fault. I wanted a blind one, but when there wasn’t one, I thought, perhaps, you’d do.”

“What?” said Mrs Johnston.

“Some one who is blind; but you aren’t blind.”

“Thank Heavens, no! I can see quite well, and I don’t much admire your face, Miss.”

“But I could read to you. I can read, oh, so well. I have an invalid mother, and I’ve read to her, oh, stories upon stories out of the penny papers. I can read ever so quickly. I wish you’d try me. What I want is ten shillings a week, and, and – oh, not my food. I could have my food at Mrs Hogg’s. It is awfully plain – pease pudding and herrings mostly; but I don’t mind that if only you’d pay me ten shillings a week and let me come to you every day.”

“You are the most audacious girl! I really never heard of anything quite so extraordinary in the whole course of my life. And, pray, may I ask why you said you had come from the St. Justs?”

“I know them, you see, and I thought your maid wouldn’t let me in, so I made up an excuse.”

“Then you are a liar as well. Now, let me give you my answer. I don’t know you or anything about you. I don’t like your appearance. I don’t intend to employ you as my reader. You are exceedingly awkward and your dress is untidy. If you are a lady you scarcely look like one, and ladies don’t go to lodge with women like Mary Hogg.”

“If they are very poor they do,” said Nesta. “I have got very little money.”

“What is your name?”

“Oh, please, don’t ask me. I would rather not say.”

“Indeed! You’d rather not say. And do you suppose that I’d take a girl into my employment – a girl who cannot give me her name?”

“I’d rather not. What is the use? You are very cruel. I wish there had been a blind one about; she wouldn’t be so cruel.”

“Will you please go. Just go straight out by that door. Don’t knock yourself against my silver again. The hall is very short, and the front door within a few feet away. Open it; get to the other side; shut it firmly after you and depart. Don’t let me see you again.”

Nesta did depart. She felt as though some one had beaten her. She had never, perhaps, in all her pampered existence, received so many blows in such a short time as that terrible old Mrs Johnston had managed to inflict. At first, she was too angry to feel all the misery that such treatment could cause; but when she entered the Hogg establishment and found in very truth from the moist atmosphere of the place, from the absence of any preparations for a meal, and from the worried expression on Mrs Hogg’s face, that she was indeed a laundress, she burst into tears.

“Highty tighty!” said Mrs Hogg. “I can’t have any more of this. Out you go. Did you see her?”

“Oh, don’t ask me. She’s a perfect terror!”

“She has a sharp bark, but what I say is that her bark’s worse nor her bite. She pays regular. Now, why couldn’t you bring yourself to mind her and to soothe her down a bit? Maybe she’d do well by you.”

“She wouldn’t have me on any terms. She turned me right out. She didn’t like me at all.”

“I’m not surprised at that. I don’t much like von, either. But there’s your dinner in the corner there. I wropt it up in a bit o’ paper. You’d best take it out and eat it in the fields. It’ll be all mess and moither and soapsuds and steaming water here for the rest of the day.”

“And when may I come back again?”

“I don’t want you back at all.”

“But I suppose you won’t turn me out?”

“No, you may share my bed. You behaved better last night. Come back when you can’t bear yourself any longer, and if you can buy yourself a draught of milk and a hunch of bread for supper it would give less trouble getting anything ready. The boys’ll have cold porridge to-night, without any milk, and that’s all I can give you. I can never be bothered with cooking on a washing day.”

Nesta took up her dinner, which was wrapped up in a piece of old newspaper, and disappeared. She walked far, far until she was tired. Then she sat down and opened the little parcel. Within was the rind of a very hard cheese and a lump of very stale bread. But Nesta’s hunger was now so strong that she ate up the bread and devoured the cheese and felt better afterwards.

Chapter Twenty Nine
Making Sunshine All Round

It was between three and four o’clock on that same day when Angela St. Just stepped out of her pretty carriage and went up the neatly kept path which led to Mrs Johnston’s house. Mrs Johnston was not a favourite of hers, nor, for that matter, of anybody else. How Mercy, her nice little maidservant, managed her so wonderfully; how Miss Palliser, the girl who had lately been married and gone to America, had put up with her, was a marvel to most people. But then, Angela rather liked people whom others disliked, and she generally managed to give them a ray of brightness. She entered the little parlour now, and was received by the old lady with outstretched hand.

“My dear, my dear! this is good,” she said. “I am so delighted, Angela; sit dawn, and tell me all about yourself.”

Angela pushed back her hat and looked at old Mrs Johnston, then she said quietly:

“I was determined to give you a whole hour, and here I am, and you must make the most of me, for I am leaving Castle Walworth to-day. I am going back to Hurst Castle.”

“Oh, dear, what a pity. Just when I thought you’d stay here for a good while.”

“I am sorry, but it can’t be helped. My friend, Marcia – you have heard me speak of Marcia.”

“Of course, I have, my dear, and a wonderful young lady she is.”

“Well, she is in trouble. All the Aldworths are in trouble.”

“Are they indeed?” said Mrs Johnston. She could be sympathetic enough where anybody in the most remote degree connected with the St. Justs was concerned, in especial with Angela, whom she worshipped.

“I am sorry for that,” she said, “if it worries you. You ought to have no worries.”

“But why not? But I’m not exactly worried, only, of course, I want to help them, and I am quite sure it will all come right in the end. I feel like that about everything.”

“You are a very blessed girl,” said the old lady.

Angela smiled.

“God is so good to me,” she said.

“Well, tell me all about it – what has put you out?”

“I have told you, have I not, about Mrs Aldworth? Well, you know, she is getting better. We managed to get her to Hurst Castle last week, and she is enjoying herself very much. Marcia is looking after her, and she is gradually getting more and more the use of her limbs, and a great specialist is coming from London to see her, and to give advice as to her future treatment. Everything except one now points to the possibility of a complete recovery.”

“And what is the one thing, my dear?”

“The one thing that is making us all so anxious is this. You know I told you that there are three young Aldworth girls. Molly is one, Ethel another, and Nesta, the third. Nesta has been very difficult and very troublesome, and the fact is she has run away.” Mrs Johnston did not know why she suddenly gave a little jump, but the next minute she said quickly:

“How old is she?”

“About fifteen, I think.”

“Rather big for her age?”

“I should say she was; she is unformed; she is rather untidy.”

“Awkward, I should say. Shouldn’t you now pronounce her awkward?”

“I think I should. I don’t know her very well, you see. I have only seen her once, and Marcia has told me about her. She is a very difficult girl.”

“And how long is it since she left home?”

“She left home last Saturday week. She ran away first to Scarborough to stay with some friends. We were all distressed about that, and we had to tell a story to Mrs Aldworth which partly satisfied her. We didn’t tell her anything that wasn’t true. We said Nesta had gone to stay with the Griffiths, and we thought it best that she should stay there for a few days. Then we got Mrs Aldworth to Hurst Castle, and she has been doing splendidly ever since. But the difficulty is that we shall have to tell her soon that we really don’t know where Nesta is. We don’t know, and we are in great trouble.”

“Oh, my dear, I am sure trouble is very bad for you, you look so frail. There now, I wonder when Mercy will bring the tea.”

Mrs Johnston had scarcely uttered these words before the room door was opened, and Mercy, her cheeks crimson with excitement at the greatness of the honour conferred upon her, laid a delicately prepared tea on the centre table. There was silver of the oldest and quaintest pattern; there was china thin as an eggshell; there was a little silver teapot, in short everything was perfection. There were cakes of the very lightest that Mercy’s skilful hands could make. Angela was the last person to despise such a meal; on the contrary, she received it with marked appreciation.

“How delicious! How much, much nicer than the meal I should have had at Castle Walworth. Oh, how good of you, how good of you to get it for me. But you must let me pour out the tea, and give you a cup.”

The radiant face, the shining eyes, the sympathetic manner, all did their work on cross old Mrs Johnston. Why couldn’t other people come in like Angela and make sunshine all round them? What was the matter with Mrs Johnston that she forgot her ailments and her crotchets, and her disagreeablenesses? She was only anxious now to please her young guest.

“There now,” she said, “it is good for sair een to look at you. You have cheered me and heartened me up wonderfully. But as I was saying, troubles aren’t good for you, dear, you are fretting yourself, I’m sure.”

“I am really anxious, though I know I oughtn’t to be. I am sure things will come right, I have always thought so. They do come right in the long run, but still Mrs Aldworth is so delicate, and Nesta has run away again from the people she was staying with at Scarborough.”

“Well,” said Mrs Johnston, “you say you believe things will come right. I’ve not been at all of that way of thinking. I don’t pretend that I have. It has been, my idea that things were much more likely to go wrong than right. I have found it so in life. But there, what ever possessed you, in the midst of all your anxieties, to write me a little note last night and say that you would come to see me this afternoon, and that perhaps you’d come about tea time, and that perhaps Mercy would make some of her scones, for you could never forget how delicious they tasted last time? I can tell you, Miss Angela, I awoke this morning feeling as cross and as bad and as sour as an old woman could feel, for I was aching from head to foot with the rheumatism, and I was thinking how lonely it was not to have chick nor child belonging to me, and Miss Palliser, who had her faults, poor thing, but who knew my ways, gone to America, and had it not been for your note, I don’t know what I should have done, but that cheered me, and I got downstairs. But what do you think? – even with the hope of seeing you, I couldn’t help having the grumps. But to go on with my story, I was grumbling and grumbling inside me – not that I said a word, for there wasn’t any one to say it to; Mercy was in the kitchen, with her heart in her month at the thought of seeing you, and I was by the window wondering how I could pass the hours and bear the pain in my back and down my legs, when there came a loud, impertinent sort of ring at the bell of the front door, and I wondered who that could be. I heard Mercy parleying with some one in the hall, and after a bit, in she walked and said that a girl wanted to see me, and that she knew you. Oh, dear, I thought for sure she’d come to tell me that you couldn’t come, and the same thought must have been in Mercy’s mind, for her eyes looked quite dazed. So I said: ‘Mercy, show her in,’ and in she came, as awkward a creature as you could clap your eyes on. Will you believe me, my dear, she wasn’t more than half inside the room before she bumped against my little table with my precious silver ornaments, and knocked some of them over, and it was a providence that they weren’t injured. Then, she came right in front of me, and asked me if I didn’t want some one to read to me. Never was there a queerer creature. When I questioned her whether she had brought a message from you, she said she hadn’t, and that she came herself, to see me, and that she was living in Mrs Hogg’s cottage – Mary Hogg’s cottage; that widow that I have so often told you about, the one who does my washing, by the way. You may be quite sure I was pretty well excited and angry when she said that, and I sent her away double quick; but it’s my certain sure opinion that she is the very girl you are looking for. I am as sure of it as that my name is Margaret Johnston.”

Chapter Thirty
Found at last

Angela did not quite know how she got out of the house. There was some fuss and some regret on the part of Mrs Johnston, and Mercy very nearly cried, but at last she did get away. She stepped into her little carriage, and drove down the road and went straight as fast as she possibly could to Mrs Hogg’s cottage.

Mrs Hogg was still busy over her washing, but she had come to the wringing stage, and the steam was not quite so thick in the kitchen, and certainly her face, flushed and tired as it was, quite beamed when she saw Angela.

“Dear, dear, Miss Angela, you mustn’t come in. ’Tain’t a fit place to put your dainty, beautiful feet into, ’tain’t really, Miss.”

“Will you come and speak to me here for a minute, Mrs Hogg?” said Angela, and she waited in the tiny porch.

Mrs Hogg came out.

“You have a girl staying with you, haven’t you?”

“Oh, dear me, Miss, so I have, a young girl – I don’t know nothing about her, not even her name, nor a single thing. It was Mary, my daughter, sent her. She’s nothing but a fuss and a worry, and that touchy about her food as never was, turning up her nose at good red herring and at pease pudding, and dumplings, and what more can a poor woman give, I’d like to know?”

“You are sure you don’t know her name?”

“No, Miss. She’s a very queer girl.”

“Is she – you understand those sort of things, Mrs Hogg – is she, in your opinion, a young lady?”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” was Mrs Hogg’s rejoinder, “and to my way o’ thinking – to be frank with you – Miss, she ain’t.”

This was rather a damper to Angela’s hopes, but after a minute she reflected that probably Nesta was a rough specimen of the genus Lady, and that at any rate it was her duty to follow up this clue to the end.

“I should like to see her,” she said. “Where is she now?”

“Oh, Miss, if I thought, even for a single moment, that she was a friend of yourn, I’d treat her very different; but all she did was to stand in the middle of my kitchen on Saturday – ”

“On Saturday?” said Angela.

“Yes; Miss, on Saturday, and she says as bold as brass – ‘Mary Hogg sent me.’ That was her; but if I’d known – ”

“Where is she now?” said Angela:

“I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in all flustered and angry, forsooth, because poor old Mrs Johnston hadn’t been given a stroke of blindness – that seemed to put her out more than anything else. She must have a most malicious mind – that is, according to my way of thinking. Well, anyhow, Miss, I gave her a bit of dinner when she came in, and I told her to take it out and eat it. I don’t know from Adam where she is now.”

“She would go, perhaps, into the country?”

“Well, Miss, perhaps she would. Would you like Ben and Dan to go along and look for her!”

“I wish they would,” said Angela.

Ben and Dan were rotated out of their lairs in the back part of the premises, and were only too charmed to do Angela’s bidding. They flew off, fleet as a pair of little hares, down the shady lanes, looking in vain for Nesta.

But it was Angela herself who at last found her. She had decided not to drive in her carriage, for the sound of wheels, and the rhythmic beat of the ponies’ feet might startle the girl, and if she really meant to hide, might make her hide all the more securely. No, she would walk. So she gathered up her white skirt and walked down the summer lanes. By-and-by she thought she heard a noise which was different from the song of the birds, and the rushing of the waters, and the varied hum of innumerable bees. She stood quite still. It was the sound of distress, it was a sob, and the sob seemed to come from the throat of a girl. Angela stepped very softly. She went over the long grass and came to a tree, and at the foot of that tree lay a girl, her face downward, her whole figure shaken with sobs. Angela laid her hand on her.

“Why, Nesta!” she said. “How silly of Nesta to be afraid.”

The words were so unexpected that Nesta jumped to her feet; then covered her face, then flung herself face downwards again and sobbed more piteously than ever.

“I have found you, Nesta, and nobody is going to be in the least bit angry with you. May I sit by you for a little?”

“You are Miss St. Just – you are the person everybody worships and makes a fuss over. I don’t want you. Go away.”

“I am sorry you don’t want me, but I am not going away. I am going to stay by you; may I?”

Nesta could not refuse. Angela sat down. Ben and Dan peeped their round childish faces over the top of the hedge and saw Angela sitting by Nesta’s side.

“Hooray!” said Ben.

“Hurroa!” said Dan.

Angela turned.

“Go back to your mother, boys. Here is a penny for you, Dan, and another for you, Ben. Go back to your mother, and say that I have found my friend, Miss Nesta Aldworth, and am taking her back to Castle Walworth.”

This was a most awe-inspiring message; the boys, young as they were, understood some of its grand import. They rushed presently into their mother’s cottage.

“You be a little flat, mammy!” they said. “Why, the gel you give red herrings to, and no butter, is a friend of our Miss Angela’s.”

“The Lord forgive me!” said Mrs Hogg, and she forgot all about her washing, and sat down on the first chair she could find, and let her broad toil-worn hands spread themselves out one on each knee.

“The Lord forgive me!” she said at intervals.

Ben was deeply touched. He went and bought some fruit with his penny and pressed it on his mother, but she scarcely seemed to see it.

“To think as I complained to her of robbing me of half my rightful bedclothes,” was her next remark. “May I see myself in my true light in the future. How could I tell? How could I tell?”

But down by the stream a very different scene was being enacted; for Angela, having given her message to the boys, did not say anything more for a long time. Nesta waited for her to speak. At first Nesta was angry at being, as she expressed it, caught. She had not that worshipful attitude towards Angela St. Just that all the other girls of the neighbourhood seemed to feel. She rather despised her, and did not at all wish to be in her company. But then that was because she had never before been in close contact with Angela. But now that Angela gave that remarkable message, that respect-restoring message to the boys, it seemed to Nesta that a healing balm, sweet as honey itself, had been poured over her troubled heart. She could not help liking it; she could not help reflecting over it. A friend of Angela’s, and she was to go back with her to Castle Walworth.

After a little she raised her head again and peeped at her companion. How pretty Angela looked in her white dress, with her perfect little profile, the dark lashes partly shading her cheeks. She was looking down; she was thinking. Her lips were moving. Perhaps she was a real angel – perhaps she was praying. Very much the same sort of feeling as she had inspired in the breast of Penelope Carter, began now to dawn in that of Nesta, and yet Nesta had a far harder and more difficult nature than Penelope. All the same Nesta was touched. She reflected on the difference between herself and this young lady, and yet Angela had spoken of her as her friend. Then suddenly, she did not know why – Nesta touched Angela on the arm. The moment she did this Angela turned. Quick as thought her soft eyes looked full into Nesta’s face.

“Oh, you poor child, you poor child!” she said, and then she swept her arms round the girl and kissed her several times on her cheek.

“Now, Nesta,” she said, “we won’t ask you for any motives. I am not going to put a single question to you, but I want you just to come straight back with me to the Castle. I will tell you after dinner what I am going to do next; but there is no scolding, nothing of that sort, you are just to come back with me.”

“Am I?” said Nesta. “I can’t believe it.”

“You will believe it when you see it. Come, we must be quick, it is getting late.”

She took Nesta’s hand and led her down the road. There was the pretty carriage, there were the ponies with the silver bells; there was the smartly dressed little groom.

“Harold, get up behind,” said Angela, “I am in a great hurry to get back to Castle Walworth.”

Nesta found herself seated beside Angela, and quick as thought, it seemed to her, they were flashing through the summer air, past Mrs Hogg’s cottage, where the boys, Ben and Dan, raised the loudest and heartiest “Hooray!” and “Hurroa!” that Angela had ever heard. The ponies pricked up their ears at the sound, and flew faster than ever, up the village high street, past the station, and up and up, a little slower now, the steep hill where Nesta and Mary Hogg had walked side by side; then through the portcullis, and into the courtyard of the castle.

Then indeed a new shyness came over Nesta. It was like a troubled, hopeless, despairing sinner, so she thought, being led into heaven by an angel.

“I’m not fit – I’m not really,” she said, and she tugged at Angela’s hand, as if she would refuse to go in.

“Oh, you are fit enough,” said Angela, “you are my friend.”

When they got inside, Angela said something to a man who was standing near in livery, and then they went down a passage, where they met no one, up some low steps, along another passage and then a door was flung open, and Angela and Nesta entered. They entered a pretty bedroom, furnished as Nesta had never seen a bedroom before. Angela went up to a girl who was sitting by the window sewing.

“Clements,” she said, “this is my friend. I want you to put her into one of my pretty dresses, so that she may come down to dinner with me. Attend to her and see to everything she wants; she will sleep here to-night. This room leads out of my room, dear,” she said, giving Nesta another smiling glance, and then she left her.

Clements dressed Nesta in white, and she would have thought on another occasion that she had never looked so nice. But she was really past thinking of how she looked, for somehow Angela’s treatment was awaking something different within her, something which had never, even on that night when her mother was so terribly ill, been truly awakened before. She looked humble and very sad when Angela came back to her.

“You look quite sweet,” said Angela, giving her a kiss. “Come along downstairs. By the way, I have sent a telegram to Marcia to tell her that you are all right, and that I am bringing you back to-morrow.”

“Home?” said Nesta.

“Well, to your mother. That will make you happy, won’t it?”

“Mothery!” said Nesta, and there was a lump in her throat.

“I’ll tell you all about it after dinner. I have excellent news for you,” said Angela.

At another time that dinner, eaten in the company of people whom Nesta had never even dreamed about before, might have confused her, but she was past being confused now. She had a curious sensation, however, that the rich and delicately cooked food provided for the guests at Castle Walworth was as little to her taste as fried herrings and pease pudding at Mrs Hogg’s cottage. There was a heavy weight about her heart; she could scarcely raise her eyes to look at any one. Angela seemed to know all that, for after dinner she took her away, and out in the cool garden in the shadows of the summer night she talked to Nesta as no one had ever talked to her before.