"What is it, Cranstone? nothing wrong?"
"Oh no, only that our travelling party is to be enlarged in London. Little Irene Packingham is to spend the winter at San Remo with her grandmother, and the telegram is from Mrs. Baker, the child's schoolmistress, saying Lady Burnside had telegraphed to her to communicate with me."
"How very odd not to write! It must be a sudden determination."
"Yes; but we shall not get to Paddington, much less to San Remo, if we dawdle about here any longer; come, make haste."
They were off at last, and at the station several friends appeared, who came to wish them a safe journey. Ingleby and the footman had got the luggage labelled and in the van; and Dorothy and her mother were comfortably seated in a first-class carriage, while Canon Percival stood by the door, exchanging a few last words with a gentleman; and then the guard came up with the familiar question—"Any more going?" Canon Percival jumped in, and they were gliding quietly out of the station and leaving Coldchester far behind.
For the convenience of early crossing the English Channel the next morning, the party were to sleep at the Charing Cross Hotel; and here, under the charge of one of Mrs. Baker's governesses, little Irene Packingham was waiting for them.
Dorothy's curiosity had been roused when her mother told her of a little travelling companion, but the two children stood looking at each other, shy and speechless, while Canon Percival and Mrs. Acheson were engaged talking to the governess.
She was a prim, stiff-looking, elderly woman, who was the useful governess in Mrs. Baker's school. She only taught the little girls, looked after the servants, and met girls at the station, or, as in this instance, accompanied one who was leaving the school.
"Irene has not been very well of late," Miss Pearce was saying; "and Colonel Packingham seems to have written to Lady Burnside that he wished her to spend the rest of the term till after the Christmas holidays at San Remo. Mrs. Baker had a letter from Lady Burnside, requesting us to prepare Irene to start with you to-morrow morning. It is very short notice, but I hope she has her things all right."
After a few more words of a like kind, Miss Pearce said she must hasten back to St. John's Wood, and bade her little charge good-bye.