CHAPTER VIII
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Miss Osric arrived at the Castle on the afternoon following Sydney’s expedition to Dacreshaw.
A carriage was sent to meet the 4 o’clock train, and Sydney, in spite of an uncomfortably shy sensation at the bottom of her heart, begged leave to go and meet her governess.
“Certainly not! it would be most unsuitable!” said Lady Frederica, in her most decided manner, and she walked away, leaving Sydney to wonder why everything she wished to do was either unsuitable or absurd. The words were unknown at No. 20, in that dull old square not far from Euston Station, which was home.
Still, Miss Osric should have a welcome at the Castle if she could not at the station, and Sydney hung up the pictures she had bought at Dacreshaw, and coaxed some lovely hot-house flowers out of the head-gardener, Macintosh, to fill the vases in her governess’s room.
St. Quentin was rather amused by her extensive preparations. “But you see,” Sydney remarked, when he made a laughing comment on them, “Miss Osric may be feeling just as shy and wretched as I did when I came here, and it will make a difference if somebody is really pleased to see her.”
“Didn’t you think we were pleased to see you?” asked her cousin.
“You were all very kind,” Sydney said doubtfully, “but, you didn’t exactly want me, did you? It is only at home one is really wanted.”