Chapter III.
Nan's visitor, Miss Rolf, left the little shop, and walked away in the winter's dusk up the main street, and down one of the more secluded streets, where the "upper ten" of Bromfield lived. Bromfield was a large dull town, full of factories and smoke, and had a general air of business and money-making. The houses on the pretty street to which Miss Rolf directed her steps seemed to be shut away from all the dust and noise of the town, and Mrs. Grange's gateway was the finest and most aristocratic-looking one in the row. Miss Rolf went in at the gate, past a pretty lawn dotted with cedars, to the side entrance of a long low stone house, within the windows of which lights were already twinkling. She had a curious, amused smile on her face as she went down the hall, and it had not faded when she entered the parlor fronting the garden and the lawn.
Three people were seated in the fire-light—an elderly lady with a pale sweet face, a tall boy of fifteen, and a gentleman whose face was like Miss Rolf's in regularity of feature, but much softer in expression.
In the luxurious room Miss Rolf looked much more in her place than in Mr. Rupert's butter shop, and if Nan could have seen her "second cousin Phyllis" there, she would have been more than ever certain that she belonged to those who had the money.
Miss Rolf was greeted by all three occupants of the room at once.
"Well, Phyllis?"—from the gentleman.
"Did you see her?"—this from the boy.
"Well, what happened?"—this from the lady.
Miss Rolf sank into one of the many easy-chairs, and, leaning back, began to draw off her long gloves.
"Yes, I saw her," she answered, smiling. "It was really very interesting. Quite like something in a story. There was the horrible little store, and Mrs. Rupert, a vulgar sort of woman; and then the little girl came in—dreadfully untidy and dowdy-looking, but really not at all so common as I feared. She has the hazel eyes every one admired so in her father."
"And did you tell her that her aunt Letitia wants her to go to Beverley?" said the boy, eagerly.
"No, I didn't," rejoined Miss Rolf. "I thought I'd do that when I went to-morrow. There was no time to discuss the matter. Besides, I wanted to see the child alone first."
"Why not send for her to come here?" Mrs. Grange said, gently.
"Not a bad idea," said Miss Rolf, sitting upright. "She might come to-morrow, instead of my going there."
"I can't help thinking Letitia will regret it," said the gentleman, who was Miss Rolf's father.
"Why should she, papa?" said the boy, quickly. "Surely it is only fair. Her father was left out of Cousin Harris's will just for a mere caprice, and why should Cousin Letty have everything, and this child nothing? I don't see the justice of that."
"But to remove her from a low condition; to place her among people she never knew—I am afraid it is unwise," said Mr. Rolf, shaking his head. "You don't understand it, Lance; I don't expect you to. Just wait, and see my words come true."
Lance, or Lancelot Rolf, laughed brightly. He seemed quite prepared to take the risks on Miss Letitia Rolf's venture. While Miss Rolf wrote her letter to little Nan, the boy watched her earnestly. He was intensely interested in this new-found cousin, and, had he known where to go, would certainly have paid a visit to the cheese-monger's family himself.
"NAN WAS DRESSED BY MRS. RUPERT AND MARIAN."
He would have found an excited little party had he done so, for by eight o'clock Mrs. Rupert had indulged in every possible speculation about Nan's future. Mr. Rupert, a tall, thin, weather-beaten man, had come in for tea, and was told of the visitor, and obliged to hear all Mrs. Rupert's ideas and hopes on the subject, while Nan herself was the only quiet member of the party. She sat at the tea-table, for once in her life very quiet and repressed. Just what she hoped or thought she could not have told you; but it seemed to her as if something like her old life with her parents might be coming back. Could it be she was to go away, and leave Bromfield, the cheeses and butter and eggs, her aunt's loud voice, Marian's little airs of superiority, and Phil's rough kindness, forever behind her?
"Come, Nan, you may as well help with the tea-things, if you are going to see your rich relations," said her aunt's voice, sharply recalling her to her duties, and Marian laughed scornfully.
"I don't suppose we'll know Nan, or she us, by to-morrow night," she said, with a shrug of the shoulders.
Early the next morning a man-servant from Mrs. Grange's brought a note for Nan, which she read in the little untidy parlor, surrounded by all the family. It was from Miss Rolf, requesting Nan to come as soon as possible to Mrs. Grange's house, and it produced a new flutter in the household. Nan was dressed by Mrs. Rupert and Marian in everything that either of the girls' scanty wardrobe possessed worth putting on for such a visit. Had she but known it, a much simpler toilet would have been far more appropriate and becoming, for her purple merino dress and Marian's red silk neck-tie, her "best" hat with its green feathers, and Mrs. Rupert's soiled lavender kid gloves, were a very dreadful combination. Nan, as she walked up Main Street, did not feel entirely satisfied with the costume herself. If her head had not been so dazed by what the Ruperts already called her "good fortune," she would have felt it all more keenly. As it was, she went into Mrs. Grange's gateway feeling herself in a dream, and wondering how and where she would wake up.