"Oh, yes; I'm always a dear when you want me to do anything," Peggy replied; but she packed them up all the same, for she was nothing if not good-tempered.
Dear old Olive put in a good many stitches for me during the next few days, and so did mother. Between them they got me ready in a week.
I felt very miserable when the hour of departure came. It was a raw, cold day, and the very thought of the journey made me feel faint and sick. I behaved like a baby at the last and Olive had to be very stern and resolute with me. She drove with me to Liverpool Street, where father met us and saw me into the express for Chelmsford. It was due there in fifty minutes, so the journey was nothing to mind if I had not been so exceedingly weak. I soon began to revive, however, and my spirits rose as the train bore me farther and farther from the gloom of London out into the heart of the clear, cold country.
[CHAPTER III]
"GAY BOWERS"
THE old country house known as "Gay Bowers," which had been my aunt's home ever since she married, was situated some five miles from Chelmsford and no nearer to the railway. It was still early in the afternoon when I reached that station, but the air struck me as rather more than fresh as I stepped out of the train. I shivered as I buttoned my coat more tightly about me and looked round, hoping to discern a friendly face amid the bustling crowd on the platform, for I felt sure that my aunt would send some one to meet me.
"Nan!" said a voice beside me, and I turned to see a tall, well-set-up young fellow looking down on me with bright merry eyes. For a moment I was bewildered, then I recognised the face, which was still boyish in spite of the carefully cultivated moustache and the height from which he gazed on me. This was Jack Upsher, son of the Vicar of Greentree, the parish to which "Gay Bowers" belonged. He had been my playfellow when, as a child, I spent my summer holidays at "Gay Bowers"; but of late years he had been absent from the vicarage whenever I happened to visit aunt. So we had not met since we were both grown-up, and it was rather audacious of him to address me in that familiar way, but I did not resent it, especially as he hastened to add:
"I beg your pardon; I should have said 'Miss Darracott,' but you have altered so little from the 'Nan' I used to know, that the name sprang of itself to my lips."
"Indeed I hoped I had altered a good deal," was my reply. "But you are just the same, Jack, except that you have grown so immensely."
He laughed heartily as he shook my hand.