When once she had realized this, she found that London was a dreary place, and she was tired of her journey in the world. From that moment she found it quite useless to try to be merry, and hard even to seem brave, and every hour she found it harder.
There was the bad hour of twilight, when she sat alone by the fire in her father's chamber. She listened to the rumble of coaches in the street below and the cry of a street-seller: "Hot fine oat-cakes, hot!" She found something in the sound so doleful that she wanted to cry.
There was the lonely hour when she woke in the night and did not know where she was. When she remembered at last that she was in London, bound for Larkland in Sussex, she lay wide-eyed and wondered what would happen to her at her godmother's house, till through the chamber window the dawn came, bleak and gray.
Last, and worst, there was the bitter hour when she sat, perched on high at Mawkin's side, in a carrier's wagon. She looked down at her father, and he stood looking up at her. She knew that in a moment the wagon would start on its long journey into Sussex, and he would be left behind in London town.
Merrylips managed to smile, as she waved her hand to her father in farewell, but it was an unsteady little smile. And when once the clumsy wagon had lumbered out of the inn-yard, and she could no longer catch a glimpse of her father's sturdy figure, she hid her face against Mawkin's shoulder.
"Cheerly, mistress my pretty!" comforted Mawkin. "Do but look upon the jolly fairings your good father hath given you. If here be not quince cakes—yes, and gingerbread, and comfits! Mercy cover us! Comfits enough to content ye the whole journey, even an ye had ten mouths 'stead o' one. And as I be christom woman, here are fair ribbons, and such sweet gloves,—yes, and a silver shilling in a little purse of silk. Do but look thereon!"
"Oh, I care not for none of 'em," said Merrylips. "Leave me be, good Mawkin!"
But all that day Mawkin chattered. She pointed out sheep and kine and crooked-gabled houses, and men that were scouring ditches or mending hedges. Indeed, she tried her best to amuse her young mistress.
Merrylips found her talk wearisome, but next day, when Mawkin, who was vexed at her dumpishness, kept sulkily silent, she found the silence harder still to bear. She did not wish to think too much about her godmother, for the nearer she came to her, the more afraid of her she grew. So, to take up her mind, she ate the comfits and the cakes with which her father had heaped her lap. It was no wonder, then, that on the third day of her journey she had an ache in the head that was almost as hard to bear as the ache in her heart.
About mid-afternoon a chill, fine rain began to fall. Mawkin, all huddled in her cloak, slept by snatches, and woke at the lurching of the wagon, and grumbled because she was wakened. But Merrylips dared not sleep lest she tumble from her place. So she sat clinging fast to Mawkin's cloak with her cold little hands, while through the drizzling rain she stared at the plashy fields and the sheep that cowered in the shelter of the dripping hedges.