Now it was to bring, within a few days, enough guests to fill all the spare rooms of Kencote for Joan's wedding; and it was bringing, this afternoon, one of the most valued of them all.
This was Miss Bird, affectionately known to the Clinton family as "the old starling," who had first taught Dick his letters nearly forty years before, and had gone on teaching letters, and other things, to all the young Clintons in turn, until the twins had reached the ripe age of fifteen, six years before. Then she had left, much regretted, partly because the twins had to be "finished," and she could not undertake suitably to finish them, partly because duty had called her from the spacious comforts of Kencote to share the narrow home of a widowed sister.
The twins were at the station to meet her—tall, beautiful, stately young women to the outward eye, but, for this occasion, children again at heart, and mischievous children at that.
"Oh, what fun it is!" said Nancy, with a shiver of pleasure, as the train came into the station. "I don't feel a day older than fourteen. There she is, Joan—the sweet old lamb!"
It must be confessed that the years had robbed Miss Bird of such sweetness as she may at one time have presented to the impartial view. She was a diminutive, somewhat withered, elderly woman, but still sprightly in speech and movement, and of breathless volubility.
She flung herself out of the carriage, almost before it had come to a standstill, and was enveloped in a warm, not to say undignified embrace by both the twins at once.
"Oh, my darlings," she cried, flinging to the winds all the stops in the language, "to see you both standing there just as it used to be though one married and the other going to be and such a grand marriage too as sweet as ever my bonnet Nancy darling and everything the same here but a new station-master I see oh it is too much."
Joan and Nancy marched her out of the station to the carriage, all three laughing and talking at once, and made her sit between them, which was just possible, as she took up very little room.
She wiped away an unaffected tear, and broke out again.
"This is one of the happiest days of my life and to think of me being an honoured guest and amongst all the lords and ladies I hope I shall know how to behave myself and one of the first you wrote to darling Joan as you said and Mr. Clinton saying whoever else was left out I must be asked and how is dear Mrs. Clinton well I hope I'm sure the kindness I have received in this house I never can forget and never shall forget darling Nancy my bonnet."