A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Vol. 3

by G. A. Henty

Sophy went on until at last she came to the well-remembered east lodge, where she had lived so long as a child, not dreaming then but that it was her proper home; and afterwards, as long as she lived at Harmer Place, she had been in the habit of going down at least once a week to see her foster-mother. She knocked at the door, and without waiting for an answer, lifted the latch and went in.

A tall woman of about fifty years old came out from the inner room on hearing the door open, for she had not heard Sophy's gentle knock.

She looked suspiciously for a moment at her visitor, and then seeing by her attire, which was that of a respectable servant, that although she had a bundle in her hand, she was no ordinary tramp, she asked civilly, "What may you please to want?"

"Don't you know me, Mammy Green?" Sophy said, calling her by her old childish name.

The woman fell back as if struck by a blow, her candle dropped from her hand and was extinguished; then she seized Sophy's arm and almost dragged her to the fire, that she might see her features more distinctly, and then as Sophy smiled sadly, she recognized her face again, and with a cry of "Sophy! Sophy!" caught her in her strong arms and kissed her, and cried over her. Sophy cried too, and the old woman recovered from her unwonted emotion first, for Sophy was weak and exhausted by the day's excitement, and her foster-mother soothed and petted her as she would have done a child. When Sophy was composed again, her nurse took off her bonnet and shawl, and made her sit down quietly in the great oak settle by the fire, while she put some wood on and made a cheerful blaze. Then she lit the candle again, and laid the little round table with the tea-things; in a short time the kettle boiled, and Sophy, after taking a cup of tea, felt once more herself.

"And are you come down to live with me again, my dear?" her nurse asked presently.

"We will talk all that over to-morrow, Mammy Green, and I will tell you some of my history, and what I intend doing. I am tired now, I suppose my little bedroom is nearly as it used to be?"

"Yes, just the same, deary," the woman said, and taking down a key she unlocked the door, and Sophy saw her little room quite unchanged, and looking exactly as it did when she slept there last, twelve years before. Her little drawings hung on the wall, the elaborate sampler she had worked when quite a child, was in its frame in its old place over the mantle. Not a speck of dirt was visible anywhere, and a sweet scent of rosemary and lavender filled the room. Everything was just as she had left it; the white coverlid lay on the bed, which needed only its sheets to be ready for sleeping in.

"The bed is quite aired," her nurse said, "I have the room opened, and aired, and dusted once a week, and I take the bed off and put it before the fire all day once a month, and the blankets and sheets are kept in the closet against the kitchen chimney, so they are always warm and dry. I have always been hoping you would come back to me again some day, and I was determined you should find it all ready."

She then took the paper ornament off the grate, the fire was ready laid behind it; this she lit, and in a few minutes, by the time she had made the bed, the fire burned brightly up. Sophy, exhausted and tired with her day's excitement, was soon in bed, and her old nurse then came in to see if she wanted anything else, and to tuck her up and kiss her as she had done when she was a child; and Sophy, when she had said "good night, Mammy Green," lay drowsily watching the dancing shadows cast by the fire on the wall, and could hardly believe that she was not a child again, and that all these last twenty years were not a troubled feverish dream.