In another moment they had drawn up at the great gothic door-way
“Oh, but what a paradise!” she cried, as the carriage turned into the court-yard.
“I am delighted that it pleases you,” he answered, glancing round to see what effect his ancestral home had upon Miss Grace.
“Lovely!” she murmured to Mrs. Smith.
In another moment they had drawn up at the great Gothic door-way, and immediately the figure of a little child dressed in white appeared on the top of the broad steps, kissing her small hands in token of welcome.
“Go in directly; you’ll get cold. Go in, I say,” Bootles called out. It was, indeed, bitterly cold, and a few flakes of snow were falling. But Miss Mignon had a budget of news for her Bootles, and was not to be done out of telling it.
“Lal has had a letter from home,” she piped out in her shrill voice. Lal was her name for Lacy, and home meant Blankhampton Barracks. “And the St. Bernard has gotted two puppies—beauties—and I’m to have one. Lal says so. And Terry has broked his leg.” Terry was one of Bootles’s grooms. “And Major Ally’s going to be married.”
Bootles was so surprised that he forgot the cold and his order that Miss Mignon should go in.