So she tried to comfort herself, but every day she looked out wistfully for the postman—how wistfully nobody but Miss Edith ever noticed. It was growing towards the end of November, and already the boarders were beginning to talk of the holidays. The evening recreation time was devoted to the making of Christmas presents; even the little girls were busy embroidering traycloths and constructing pincushions. Gipsy began to work a pair of slippers for her father, a rather lengthy proceeding, for she was not clever at needlecraft, and was apt to pull her wool too tightly, having to unpick her stitches in consequence. There was no particular hurry in her case, though, for it was impossible for her to dispatch the parcel in time for Christmas when she did not know where to address it. If there was a forlorn look in the brown eyes sometimes when others talked about home, they twinkled again so readily that her schoolmates never realized she could feel lonely, and a stranger in a strange land. To them she appeared the very epitome of fun and happy-go-lucky carelessness, and they would have been surprised indeed if they had known what a very sore heart she carried occasionally under her outward assumption of jollity.
Daisy Scatcherd's birthday fell on the last day of November. Daisy, though she merited her nickname of "Scatterbrains", was rather a favourite among the boarders, so she came off very well indeed in the matter of presents. Her home people had also remembered her, and many interesting parcels arrived for her during the course of the morning. Between four and half-past, in the afternoon, she was taking a run round the garden in company with a few friends, when she spied the postman walking briskly up the drive.
"I expect he's got something more for me," she exclaimed, and dived under the laurels to take a short cut to the drive and intercept him.
"Give me the letters, please! It's my birthday!" she said breathlessly.
"Only three this afternoon, missy! Don't know whether any of 'em's for you or not," said the man, laughing.
"Let me see! Yes! yes! I'll take them, please. It's all right."
Not sorry to save the extra walk to the house, the postman departed. He was late, and had a long round before he could return home. Daisy was looking eagerly at the letters. One, a thin foreign envelope, was addressed to Miss Gipsy Latimer, and that she thrust hastily into her coat pocket; the other two were for herself. They both contained postal orders, which elevated her to such heights of satisfaction that she never gave a thought to the letter she had stuffed in her pocket: indeed, in her excitement she had put it away so automatically that the incident faded from her memory almost as soon as it happened. She rushed into the house in a state of great exultation, to ask Miss Edith to take charge of her orders, and put them away safely.
"A whole pound! Isn't it lovely? I shall buy a new camera, or perhaps a bookcase like Hetty Hancock's; or I want a bracelet watch most fearfully badly, and I expect I'll get some more money at Christmas that I could put to it. What would you advise, Miss Edith?" she chattered.
"Wait till you go home and consult your mother," said Miss Edith. "What a cold you've got, child! You oughtn't to have been running about the garden. And this coat is much too thin. You must wear your thick one now. Put this away in your wardrobe, to take home at Christmas."
"Mother said I needn't take my autumn clothes back with me," objected Daisy. "It only crams up my boxes. She said they might as well be left here."