Sir John Thornton said this because a pair of arms had been flung suddenly round his neck, and two kisses imprinted passionately on his sallow cheek. A tear also rested on his cheek, but that he wiped away.
Chapter Two.
Travelling Companions.
The train moved rapidly on its way, and the girl in one corner of the railway carriage cried silently behind her crape veil. Her tears were very subdued, but her heart felt sore, bruised, indignant; she hated the idea of school-life before her, she hated the expected restraints and the probable punishments; she fancied herself going from a free life into a prison, and detested it accordingly.
Three months before, Hester Thornton had been one of the happiest, brightest, and merriest of little girls in — shire; but the mother who was her guardian angel, who had kept the frank and spirited child in check without appearing to do so, who had guided her by the magical power of love and not in the least by that of fear, had met her death suddenly by means of a carriage accident, and Hester and baby Nan were left motherless. Several little brothers and sisters had come between Hester and Nan, but from various causes they had all died in their infancy, and only the eldest and youngest of Sir John Thornton’s family remained.
Hester’s father was stern, uncompromising. He was a very just and upright man, but he knew nothing of the ways of children, and when Hester in her usual tom-boyish fashion climbed trees and tore her dresses, and rode bare-backed on one or two of his most dangerous horses, he not only tried a little sharp, and therefore useless, correction, but determined to take immediate steps to have his wild and rather unmanageable little daughter sent to a first-class school. Hester was on her way there now, and very sore was her heart, and indignant her impulses. Father’s “good-bye” seemed to her to be the crowning touch to her unhappiness, and she made up her mind not to be good, not to learn her lessons, not to come home at Midsummer crowned with honours and reduced to an every-day and pattern little girl. No, she would be the same wild Hetty as of yore: and when father saw that school could do nothing for her, that it could never make her into a good and ordinary little girl, he would allow her to remain at home. At home there was, at least, Nan to love, and there was mother to remember.
Hetty was a child of the strongest feelings. Since her mother’s death she had scarcely mentioned her name. When her father alluded to his wife, Hester ran out of the room: when the servants spoke of their late mistress, Hester turned pale, stamped her feet, and told them to be quiet.
“You are not worthy to speak of my mother,” she electrified them all one day by exclaiming. “My mother is an angel now, and you—oh, you are not fit to breathe her name!”