“I’m sure you’ve done your best, dear, and if it isn’t this time, it’ll be next,” said Aunt Beryl philosophically. “Now go straight upstairs and have a good rest.”
Lydia went, and was not at all displeased to find that her head was throbbing and her face colourless.
The following day the doctor saw her, and shook his head at her.
“Better give her a change of air, Miss Raymond. If you won’t go away yourself, it will, anyway, set you rather more free not to have Miss Lydia on your mind.”
Lydia felt that the advice might have been worded in a manner more flattering to herself, but she was pleased at the idea of a change.
She had not been away since her first arrival as an inmate of Grandpapa’s household. Aunt Beryl’s theory was that one went away to the sea, not from it. If one happened to live by the sea, there was no need to go away at all. Only Uncle George, taking his fortnightly holiday in the summer, departed on a walking or bicycling tour with some bachelor friend of his own.
“You’ll enjoy staying with your Aunt Evelyn,” said Aunt Beryl. “The girls must be nearly grown up now, I declare. How time flies! Beatrice must be all of eighteen, and Olive sixteen, and I suppose Bob is somewhere between the two of them. How long is it since you’ve seen them, Lydia?”
“Not since I was quite little—about ten, I think.”
“It’ll be nice for you to make friends with the girls. I’ve often wished you had a sister.”
Lydia did not echo the wish when she had seen the Senthoven family circle.