"Of course we can come to see you," said my aunt, "and you need not avoid us as long as you keep well. It is chiefly for Agneta's sake that I take this precaution. I do not think the gentlemen are in any danger, but I want to assure Mrs. Redmayne that I am taking all possible care of her child."
"And if I should develop the fever, I suppose you will commit me to Miss Cottrell's care at 'Ivy House,'" I said.
"Oh, there is little fear of that," said my aunt hastily. "I am glad that Paulina likes Miss Cottrell better than you do."
"Ah, but she has gone up immensely in my estimation during the last few hours!" was my reply.
"There is no doubt she has excellent qualities," said my aunt warmly, "if only she were content to be her simple, honest self, and not attempt to seem something different, which is such a fatal mistake."
Presently I took my way to the gardener's cottage. It was the kind of abode which would be called "idyllic" nowadays. Mrs. Hobbes, a dear old woman, who had been cook at Squire Canfield's before her marriage, was delighted to welcome me. She was very proud of the small garden in which her husband managed to grow specimens of almost every variety of flower. She showed me, too, her bees, and boasted of the amount of honey they produced. I thought it no wonder when I saw the wealth of flowers from which they could cull nectar, to say nothing of the glorious common, golden with gorse, lying beyond.
I listened with pleasure to Mrs. Hobbes as she talked of her bees, but found her conversation less interesting when she began to describe all the cases of scarlet fever which had come within her knowledge. Her memory had treasured up every harrowing detail of the cases which had proved fatal, and she spared me none of them.
"Ah, it's a terrible complaint!" she was saying. "If it hasn't killed them outright, I've known it make people deaf or lame for the rest of their lives. I do hope you may not have taken it, miss, for there's no saying what it will leave behind—" when to my relief I saw John coming down the lane with the small trunk aunt had promised to pack for me.
His arrival created a welcome diversion. I hastened to arrange my belongings. My bedroom was scrupulously clean, but so small and low that it became a puzzle how to make my toilette to the best advantage. But its lattice windows were open to the fresh sweet air and framed a lovely view of the common and the woods beyond. I tried to persuade, myself that this unexpected change of place was rather a happy thing for me, but with Mrs. Hobbes's dismal forebodings lingering in my mind, I could not quite succeed.
That was surely the longest day I had ever known in my life. I was not more than half-a-mile from "Gay Bowers," yet I seemed quite cut off from all the pleasant life there. No one came to see how I was settling in. Aunt Patty, I knew, had far too much depending on her. Mr. Faulkner had gone up to town in the morning, and I could not be sure that he had heard of the calamity which had befallen us. Colonel Hyde was doubtless still entertaining Agneta. Jack, whose examination was now close at hand, was working with desperate energy. I had no right to feel myself neglected, yet a sore, forlorn sense of being forsaken crept over me.