‘Nell, my lass, where are you? Come in quick; there’s a dear. You will catch a chill standing out there with nought on.’
She was hungering, poor mother, to take her stray lamb back to her bosom, and have her all to herself. She had seen with concern that Nell had neither eaten nor drank since she had returned home, and she feared the effect of the excitement on her health.
At the sound of her appeal, Nell came slowly down the dell again, and entered the sitting-room.
‘Now, my lass,’ said Mrs Llewellyn, ‘you must just sit down here on the old settle, and eat and drink a bit. I’m afraid our fare seems different from what you’ve been accustomed to in London; but you’ll soon relish it again. London folk haven’t the appetites of country people, so they’re obliged to coax their stomachs; but you’ll take this junket, I’m sure, and a glass of wine, just to please your mother.’
And as she sat her on the settle, and pressed the dainties on her, Nell felt constrained to eat them, though they tasted like leather in her mouth.
Now that the excitement was over, her white, strained looks and hollow cheeks went to her mother’s heart.
‘Ay,’ she said complainingly, ‘but you are thin and pale, my lass. I haven’t had time to see you rightly till now. Why, you’re shaking like an aspen. Have you been ill, Nell, or is this the effects of London?’
‘No, indeed, I am not ill,’ returned Nell, with quivering lips, ‘only rather tired after my journey, and maybe the excitement of coming to my dear old home. I think I had better go to bed now. I have taken you terribly by surprise; but I’m sure you’ll find a bed for me somewhere, mother.’
‘Find a bed for you, darling!’ said Mrs Llewellyn. ‘Why, your father and I would turn out of our own sooner than you shouldn’t lie easy the first night you come back to us. But your own room is ready for you, Nell. No one has slept in it since you went away,—not even Hetty—and Martha has been setting it to rights for you all the evening. Will you come to it now, my dear, for you look ready to drop with fatigue?’
Nell was only too glad to accept the offer, and Mrs Llewellyn conducted her upstairs, and undressed her, and put her to bed with all the tenderness and solicitude she had shown in performing the same offices when she was a little child.