“What nonsense! You will always be Nell to us, even if you are dressed up in silk velvet and diamonds, with lace frills,” laughed Gertrude, who had been assisting at the transformation scene. Then she asked gently, “Haven’t you ever had pretty, or even suitable, clothes before?”
“I don’t know; I suppose not, or at least, I never looked pretty in them. You see, my mother died when I was so very small, and my father did not know much about clothes, though everyone said he preached beautiful sermons.”
“But afterwards—for you say your father died ever so long ago—wasn’t there anyone to see that you had a nice frock once in a while?” Gertrude persisted, with natural girlish curiosity about Nell’s past.
“It was worse and worse afterwards; for granfer not merely didn’t know about what sort of clothes a girl ought to wear, he didn’t care,” she answered bitterly. Then she abruptly changed the conversation, for, mindful of her grandfather’s caution, she never talked of her life at the Lone House, and was extremely reticent upon the subject of her immediate past.
She often thought of Joe Gunnage’s errand to fetch the Canadian police to inspect the find at the Lone House. But she had not dared to ask any questions, or set on foot inquiries concerning it, through fear lest it should in any way harm her grandfather.
So she hid the past as carefully as she could, comforting herself that now she was on Canadian soil she was safe from any reminders of that old bad time. But it was only hidden, not forgotten, after all.
CHAPTER XI
The Recognition of Mrs. Nichols
NELL stepped off the little platform at the rear of the cars with a dazed sensation of utter unreality all about her.
Only once before, since she could remember, had she ridden in a train, and that was more than a year before her father died.