Mrs. Wynford laughed.
“You are clever enough, Jasper,” she said; “but what a figure of fun you would look in the grand sort of imperial residence that my dear late husband has described to me! You are not a lady, you know, although you are smart and clever enough to beat half the ladies out of existence.”
“I shall know how to manage,” said Jasper. “I, too, have heard of the ways of English grandees. I’ll be Evelyn’s maid. She cannot do without a maid, can she? I’ll take Evelyn back, and I will stay with her as her maid.”
Mrs. Wynford hailed this idea as a splendid one, and she even wrote a very badly spelt letter to Lady Frances, which Jasper was to convey and deliver herself, if possible, to her proud ladyship, as the widow called her sister-in-law. In this letter Mrs. Wynford demanded that Jasper was to stay with Evelyn as long as Evelyn wished for her, and she finally added:
“I dare you, Lady Frances, fine lady as you are, to part the child from her maid.”
When Mrs. Wynford died Evelyn gave way to the most terrible grief. She refused to eat; she refused to leave her mother’s dead body. She shrieked herself into hysterics on the day of the funeral, and then the poor little girl was prostrated with nervous fever. Finally, she became so unwell that it was impossible for her to travel to England for some months. And so it happened that nearly a year elapsed between the death of the mother and the arrival of the child at Castle Wynford.
CHAPTER IV.—“I DRAW THE LINE AT UNCLE NED.”
“Well, Jasper,” said Evelyn in a very eager voice to her maid that first night, “and how do you like it all?”
“How do you like it, Evelyn?” was the response.
“That is so like you, Jasper!” replied the spoilt little girl. “When all is said and done, you are not a scrap original. You make me like you—I cannot help myself—but in some ways you are too cautious to please me. You don’t want to say what you think of the place until you know my opinion. Well, I don’t care; I’ll tell you out plump what I think of everything. The place is horrid, and so are the people. I wish—oh! I wish I was back again on the ranch with mother.”