Mavis was very soon on the best of terms with all the inmates of the Mill House, with the exception of her aunt, whom she found it impossible to like as well as the others, though she could not have told why she did not feel at home with her, if she had been asked for a reason. The fact was, Mrs. John failed to understand Mavis, who was naturally of a light-hearted, joyous disposition, and she was confirmed in her impression, as time went on, that the child's nature was a superficial one. When, on the morning subsequent to the day on which the 'Nineveh' had sailed from Plymouth, Mavis had received a farewell letter from her mother, over which she had shed tears, she had had her aunt's full sympathy. But when, a few hours later, she had returned from school with Rose, apparently in good spirits, her aunt had privately dubbed her a heartless little thing, being quite unaware of the brave fight the child had made against depression.
"I advise you not to make too much of Mavis," Mrs. John remarked to her husband on one occasion, after he had taken the little girl for a drive. "You will spoil her if you're not careful."
"Oh, nonsense, my dear," he replied; "there's small danger of my doing that. She's had few pleasures in her life, poor child, and our young folks have had a great many. Bob wanted to accompany me to-day—he said it was his turn—but I told him he must give up his place in the gig to his cousin."
"That was hard on the boy, John."
"Not at all. I don't see it."
But Bob himself considered that it had been very hard, for he was unaccustomed to self-sacrifice, and he liked nothing so well as driving with his father. So when, after tea, Mavis commenced telling him and Rose of the delightful time she had had, he listened in somewhat sullen silence.
"It was so kind of Uncle John to take me to Oxford," Mavis said happily. "I think it is such a lovely place, with those beautiful virginian creepers growing all over the colleges."
"The leaves will soon be off the creepers after the first frost," remarked Rose. "I'm glad you've seen them, Mavis. Some people think Oxford prettier in the autumn than at any time, but I like it in the spring, when the hawthorn and lilacs and laburnums are in flower."
"Uncle put up the horse at an inn, and took me to see T—, that was father's college, you know, and he pointed out the rooms that were father's once, and I saw the chapel and the lime-walk, and he told me such a lot about father, how clever he was, and that he won scholarships, and in that way more than half paid for his own education. Oh, how I wish mother could have been with me to-day!"
"You'll be able to tell her all about it some time," said Rose, as she noticed a shade of sadness cross her cousin's face.