"What's all that to me?" she sobbed; "it's not like one's own flesh and blood. You'd better never have come!"
Mona felt sure that the edge of this poignant grief would very soon wear off, but when the first bend in the railway had shut the limp, flapping handkerchief out of sight, she sank back in the comfortless carriage, feeling as if she had come to the end of a severe and protracted campaign.
She was too exhausted to read, and was thankful that by some happy chance she had no fellow-passengers. No mountains and fjords haunted her memory now; but instead—changing incessantly like a kaleidoscope—came a distorted phantasmagoria of perished elastic and ill-assorted knitting-needles; red-cushioned pews and purple bonnet-strings; suffering women in poor little homes; crowded bazaar and whirling ball-room; rocky coast and frosted pines; and—steady, unchanging, like the light behind the rattling bits of glass—the wonderful, mystic glow of the suite of enchanted rooms.
Dusk was gathering when the train drew into the station. Yes; there stood Doris and the Sahib. Doris was looking eagerly in the direction of the coming train, and the Sahib was looking at Doris. But what a welcome they gave the traveller! A welcome that drove all the phantasmagoria out of her head, and made her forget that she was anything other than Doris's sister, the friend of the Sahib, and—something to somebody else.
"Ponies and pepper-pot still to the fore?" she said, as they crossed the platform.
"Oh yes; but a horrible fear has seized me lately that the pepper-pot is beginning to grow."
"Are you not coming with us?" Mona asked, as the Sahib arranged the carriage-rug.
He looked down at his great athletic figure with a good-humoured smile.
"How is it to be done?" he asked, "unless I put the whole toy in my pocket—dolls and all. Miss Colquhoun has been kind enough to ask me to dinner. I am looking forward to meeting you then."
Scarcely a word passed between the friends as they drove home, and Mona was glad to lie down and rest until dinner-time.