A telegram had been received from Uncle Jack, saying that he and Teddy, having reached London in safety, would be down by the afternoon train; so, all in the house were in a state of wild excitement at meeting again those they had thought lost for ever.
Even the vicar was roused out of his usual placidity, although Uncle Jack’s letter from Valparaiso had told all about the wonderful escape of the survivors of the Greenock; while, as for Miss Conny, who was now a perfectly grown-up young lady of eighteen, all her sedateness was gone for the moment and she was every bit as wild as the rest.
“Dear me, I’m sure the afternoon will never come!” exclaimed Cissy, walking to the window after arranging and re-arranging the flowers in the vases on the little table in the centre of the drawing-room and on the mantel-piece for about the one-and-twentieth time. “It’s the longest day I ever knew.”
“Don’t be so impatient, dear,” said Conny, trying to appear cool and tranquil as usual, but failing utterly in the attempt as she followed Cissy to the window and looked out over the lawn; “the time will soon pass by if you’ll only try and think of something else but the hour for the train to come in.”
“You’re a fine counsellor,” cried Cissy laughing, as she watched Conny’s hands nervously twisting within each other. “Why, you are as bad as I am, and can’t keep still a moment! Only Liz is calm—as if nothing had happened or was going to happen. I declare I could bang her, as Teddy used to say, for sitting there in the corner reading that heavy-looking book. I believe it must be a treatise on metaphysics or something of that sort.”
“Mistaken for once, Miss Ciss,” said the student, looking up with a smile. “It’s a volume of travels telling all about the Pacific Ocean and Easter Island, where Teddy and Uncle Jack stopped so long with the natives; so, it is very interesting.”
“Well, I’d rather for my part wait and hear about the place from our own travellers,” rejoined Cissy impatiently. “I do wish they would come! I think I will go and see how Molly is getting on with the dinner. I’m sure she’ll be late if somebody doesn’t look after her.”
“You had better leave her alone, Cissy,” remonstrated Conny. “Molly, you know, doesn’t like being interfered with; and, besides, it is very early yet, for they can’t be here before three o’clock at the earliest.”
“Oh, she won’t mind me, Con,” replied Cissy as she whisked out of the room, gaily singing now, the idea of having an object or doing something banishing her ennui; “Molly and I are the best of friends.”
However, on entering the cook’s domain Cissy found the old servant the reverse of amiable, for her face was red and hot with basting a little sucking-pig that was slowly revolving on the spit before a glowing fire that seemed to send out all the more heat from the fact of its being August, as if in rivalry of the sun without.