"I will wait with you here. But no; I must hurry home at once. Then come this afternoon, and bring any one of your school friends that you like. I shall be glad to see you and to talk over old times. Dear Mrs. Merriman, she is a great friend of mine. Give her my love, and a message that you are to come and have tea with me, and supper, too. I will send you back to Sunnyside in my carriage late this evening. Good-bye for the present, dear."
It was a very beaming face that greeted Lucy and the rest of the party when, accompanied by Mr. Singleton (the father of the fair-haired girls, and the rector of the parish), they all appeared in the church porch. Lucy went straight up to Rosamund.
"What in the world are you smiling at?" she said. "You look as though you were thinking of something extremely funny; and it makes your face look so strange, not at all like the face of a person who has just been in church."
"Will you introduce me, Miss Lucy, to this young lady?" said Mr. Singleton's pleasant voice.
Lucy was obliged to comply. She muttered the introduction in a somewhat surly tone; but Mr. Singleton was by no means proof against Rosamund's bright and clever face, her smile, which was now quite charming, and her animated manner.
"You must come and spend a day with my little girls—that is, when you can obtain leave," he said.—"Ah, Mrs. Merriman! it will be very unlike you to be over strict with your young people. They must all come to the Rectory. When is your next half-holiday?"
"You must ask Miss Archer," said Mrs. Merriman.
Miss Archer replied that Wednesdays and Saturdays would be half-holidays, and Mr. Singleton clinched the invitation by asking the party to the Rectory for the following Wednesday.
On their way home Rosamund left Lucy's side, with whom she had been walking, and ran up to Mrs. Merriman.
"Lady Jane Ashleigh is a friend of mother's, and she has asked me to go to her after lunch to spend the rest of the day with her. May I go?"