"I say, David, look sharp!" called Murtagh, from the doorway, and the next instant the carriage stopped at the bottom of the steps.
The boy who had spoken dashed down to open the door, but a sudden shyness seemed to fall upon his companions, and they shrank back into the hall. There was, however, little to be afraid of in the girl who in another moment stood upon the threshold. She seemed to be about eighteen or nineteen. There was a quiet grace in the slight figure; and the face in its setting of ruffled gold hair, was as soft as it was sparkling. Her most remarkable feature was a pair of large, dark gray eyes, which were looking out just now with a half-interested, half-wistful expression, that seemed to say this was no common arriving.
And indeed for her it was not. An absolute stranger, she was arriving for the first time at Castle Blair, to make a new home in a new country amongst relations she did not know. She had been told she was to live with an old bachelor uncle. She was not even aware of the children's existence.
The elder little girl seemed quite to understand that upon her devolved the duties of hostess, for she came forward now, and holding out her hand, said shyly, "How do you do?"
The new-comer took the hand and kept it in hers, drawing the child nearer to her as she answered in a sweet, clear voice: "I am very well, thank you, only a little tired with traveling. A long journey is very tiring."
"Yes, very," said the little girl, blushing; and there the conversation would have been likely to stop, but the boy, having taken the stranger's wraps from her, had now followed her into the hall and exclaimed heartily:
"Awfully tiring, and that drive from Ballyboden is so long. You must be very cold; come over to the fire."
As he spoke he dropped her rug and bag on the floor, and ran and pulled forward a wooden arm-chair. "Did you see the fire as you came up?" he added; "the door had got shut somehow, but we opened it on purpose."
"Yes, I saw it just now," she replied, as after a minute's hesitation she seated herself in the chair. "It looked so pleasant and cheerful through the rain, it made me wish to get to it."
"A fire's rather a jolly thing to see after a long drive in the dark," said the boy; "and we do know how to make fires here if we don't know anything else."