"And your father? How long has he been dead?"
"Oh, it seems a long time too, but they say it's only ten months."
"I need not get you any black clothes, then," her aunt said decisively.
Harebell stared at her. Black garments were unknown to her. She wondered what they were like.
The taxi took them to another station, and then a long railway journey began. Mrs. Keith was silent most of the time. Harebell, from her corner seat, surveyed the strange country with eager interested eyes. She did not want to talk; she was entirely wrapped up in the present. Childlike, she accepted the inevitable, and had no anxiety about the future. Her aunt was merely an aunt, and a grown-up; a necessary belonging, not half so interesting as the plump little lambs playing in the fields, the rabbits darting along a hedge-side, and the quaint country cottages and farms.
But as time went on, Harebell's head and back began to ache, then her eyes were too weary to gaze out any more, and finally sleep came to her.
She was barely conscious of being helped out of the train and placed in a country fly.
As they rumbled along the country roads, she slept again, and it was only when they reached her future home, that she thoroughly roused herself.
Mrs. Keith did not live in a big house, but it was comfortable, and had a rambling garden surrounded with high red-brick walls. When the door opened to them, an old man-servant appeared, and Harebell, looking at him, loved him on the spot.
He was a short square-built man, with grey hair and a round smiling face, and the merriest eyes that Harebell had ever seen.