"Now I wonder why?"
"Because you were so big, and when I saw you peeping at me from behind your newspaper, I thought you would fancy me silly to cry, and I had an idea you might laugh at me!"
"I was never farther from laughing in my life," he declared. "I never could bear to see anyone in trouble—but that's all past. You've made a lot of friends in Exeter by this time, I don't doubt."
"Oh yes, a great many!"
"What about that sour-faced individual who met you at the station?" he asked, smiling at the remembrance of Barker's astonishment at sight of him. "Do you reckon her among your friends?"
"Barker? Yea, indeed! She's a very nice woman when you get to know her. Oh!" with regret in her tones, "we are very nearly at home now, are we not?"
"Yes, very nearly."
Five minutes later the dogcart drew up in front of the Misses Holcroft's house in Powderham Crescent. Marigold hoped her aunts would be looking out, so that they might see she had driven, nor was she disappointed, for at the first glance she caught sight of their faces. Mr. Adams declined to come in; and, after he had lifted Marigold down, and handed her portmanteau to the servant who had been sent out to fetch it, he took his departure, whilst Marigold stood on the doorstep waving her hand till he was out of sight. Then she went indoors to answer her aunts' eager questions, and to give them a full and lengthy account of her visit.
The two days she had spent at Rocombe Farm had done her a world of good mentally as well as physically, and it touched her deeply to see how pleased her aunts were at her return. If she had been away two months, instead of only two days, they could not have been more glad to welcome her home.