Then she had gone up with Polly to her bedroom and had helped to pack a modest little box, and then she had whisked Polly away, out of the house into a cab, and into a station, and finally into a train, so quickly that Polly had been bewildered.
Speech came in the form of remonstrance when Grace, having kissed Polly tenderly, left the carriage as the train was beginning to move, and dropped a pretty purse into the girl’s lap as she did so.
“Oh! You mustn’t! Grace, dear, you mustn’t!” Polly cried, but the door was shut, and the train glided away, and all she saw of Grace was a fading vision of a smiling face, whose lips bade her be well and happy.
Polly sat down in the empty first-class carriage, and at the beginning she cried, and she reproached herself all round.
“How good she is, and how selfish I am! and how will mother manage without me? Will Chrissie look after her well? I hope so, but I am afraid not. I hope my darling mother does not think me unkind; it is wrong to run away just because one is tired and troubled, and yet—yet, oh! it is nice to be away! to be safe from things that hurt one to hear and see. Mother would forgive me if she knew, and I shall go back to her cured, quite cured,” Polly assured herself, severely; and she shed more tears as she said this, for being quite cured meant sweeping even the remembrance of Valentine out of her thoughts, and that was something that would take long to accomplish, if indeed it was ever accomplished at all.
By and by she grew more calm, and sitting down in a corner, she watched the landscape slip by.
The air from the wide, open country greeted her with a sweet, fresh whisper, and little by little her spirit rose, and something of the old mischief and enjoyment of life came back to lurk in her eyes.
When the sea flashed into sight, a vast mirror reflecting myriads of diamond sun rays, she almost laughed.
“I am glad I came,” she said to herself, and she said it many times as she was driven in a ramshackle old fly over the rough road from the station to Beachcroft.
“It is the sort of place where you could live quite comfortably in a bathing machine,” Grace had said. “Primitive to a degree. Why Betsy Blaine should have chosen this sort of place to start a lodging house, I never can tell; but she is quite content, and it seems that she makes her enterprise pay. It will do you any amount of good, Polly, and Blainey will take such care of you.”