"Sir George didn't forget us. He said he would ask us."
"And shall we stay to tea?"
"And wear our best frocks?"
Aunt Alice laughed at their excitement.
"Yes, wear your best frocks and best manners, and do us credit," she said, but Granny added quietly:
"I used to be told that there were no best manners, for the best ought to be the only ones ever used by us."
It was a bright sunny afternoon, when the little girls set out. It was cold weather still, and they wore their navy serge coats and skirts with white muslin blouses underneath. As Granny watched them go out of the white gate, she said to Aunt Alice:
"I shall break my heart if we have to send them to the village school, they look such gentle little creatures. I always say that breeding tells, and if we are poor, we own some ancestors worth having!"
"Oh, mother dear, I am afraid birth is not of much value nowadays," said Aunt Alice laughing; "they will have to be working women when they grow up; we must not forget that."
Charity and Hope walked along with shining faces. Faith was more sober. She had a kind of feeling that she was not really wanted, only included with the others; and she was a little shy of people whom she had never seen. But the joy of walking through green fields, and of seeing for the first time in her life some tiny calves and foals, and of coming across some cowslips, quite compensated for the little forlorn feeling in her heart. Their Aunt Alice had pointed out the big house on the hill, and told them exactly how to reach it. Three fields had to be crossed, then they kept to a green lane, reached some cross roads, took the turning towards the right and arrived at some big iron gates in a stone wall, and a pretty lodge by the side.