“Come in, then, and kiss your little sister.”
They trooped in softly, the dark-robed nuns, their rosaries jangling on the bare boards as they knelt, one by one, and kissed the tiny soft face of the child in the Superior’s arms. Bending close to the baby in the dim twilight which had now fallen on convent and garden, until the snowy linen about their calm faces fell with cold touch on the tiny hands, they scanned the childish features lovingly, and rose up one by one, bound by holy promises of tenderness and sympathy to the little one.
And so, before the evening primroses in the convent garden had shut up their pale faces for the night, and the cattle had been driven to their sheds on the hill, Freda Mulgrave was no longer motherless.
CHAPTER II.
The years rippled away so quietly at the convent that Freda Mulgrave shot up into a slender girl of eighteen while yet the remembrance of her romantic arrival was fresh in the minds of the good sisters. During all this time her father had given no sign of interest in her existence beyond the transmission of half-yearly cheques to the Mother-Superior for her maintenance and education. When, therefore, she declared her wish to become a nun, and Captain Mulgrave’s consent was asked as scarcely more than a matter of form, his reply, which came by telegraph, filled Freda and her companions with surprise.
This was the message:
“Send my daughter to me immediately. Train to Dieppe; boat to Newhaven; train to Victoria, London; cab to King’s Cross; train to Presterby.
“John Mulgrave,
“St. Edelfled’s.”
From the moment Freda read the telegram until the bitterly cold afternoon on which she found herself approaching her new Yorkshire home, the train labouring heavily through the snow, she seemed to live in a wild dream. She sat back in her corner, growing drowsy in the darkness, as the train, going more and more slowly, wound its way through a narrow, rock-bound valley, and at last entered a cutting down the sides of which the snow was slipping in huge white masses. The snorting of the two engines sounded louder, every revolution of the wheels was like a great heart-beat shivering through the whole train. Then the expected moment came, the engine stopped.
Freda heard the shouts of men as the passengers got out of the carriages, and then a rough-looking, broad-shouldered fellow climbed up to the door of her compartment, and called to her.
“Hallo! Hallo! Anybody here?” he cried, in a strange, uncouth accent. “Why, it’s t’ little lame lass, sewerly! Are ye all reeght?”