CHAPTER IX.
THE LITTLE MUMMY.
It was a week afterwards when Kitty stood at the gate of Cherry Court School to wish Florence Aylmer good-bye, for Florence had obtained the darling wish of her heart, and was on her way to Dawlish to spend a week with her mother. She was to travel third-class, and the journey was a long one, and the day happened to be specially hot, but nothing could damp Florence's delight, and Kitty, as she watched her, could not help for a moment a slight pang of envy coming over her.
"Have a good time, Florry, and tell me all about it when you return," said Kitty.
And Florence promised, thinking Kitty a very good-natured, agreeable girl as she did so, and then Kitty turned slowly back to the house and Florence found herself alone. She was driving in a hired chaise to Hilchester railway-station. She had said good-bye to Kitty and to Mrs. Clavering, and her earnest wish was that the week might spread itself into two or three, and that she could banish all thought of Kitty and Mrs. Clavering and Cherry Court School from her mind.
"For, although I mean to win the Scholarship—yes, I shall win it; I have made up my mind on that point—I cannot help more or less hating Kitty Sharston, and Mrs. Clavering, and the school itself," thought the girl. "But there, I will forget every unpleasant thing now. I have not seen the little Mummy for a whole year; it will be heavenly to kiss her again. If there is anyone in the world whom I truly, truly love it is the dear little Mummy."
All during her hot journey across England to the cool and delightful watering-place of Dawlish, Florence thought more and more of her mother. She was an only child, her father having died when she was five years old, and Mrs. Aylmer had always been terribly poor, and Florence had always known what it was to stint and screw and do without those things which were as the breath of life to most girls. And Florence was naturally not at all a contented girl, and she had fought against her position, and disliked having to stint and screw, and she had hated her shabby dress and unwieldy boots and ugly hats and coarse fare.
But one portion of her lot abundantly contented her—she had no fault to find with her mother. The little Mummy was all that was perfection. For her mother she would have done almost as much in her own way as Kitty would do for her father in hers.
And now her heart beat high and her spirits rose as she approached nearer hour by hour the shabby little home where her mother lived.
It was in the cool of a hot summer's evening that the train at last drew up at Dawlish, and Mrs. Aylmer stood on the platform waiting to receive her daughter.