"Thank you, Mrs. Freeman," said Janet, in her low, pretty voice. She tripped away, and a moment later was knocking at Miss Patience's sitting-room door.
"Come in, whoever you are!" said a sulky voice from the interior of the room.
Janet opened the door, shut it carefully behind her, and advanced to the table, on the edge of which Bridget had perched herself as if she were on horseback.
"Well, what do you want now that you have come?" asked Miss O'Hara, in her proudest voice. "You never liked me, so I suppose you are awfully pleased to see me like this?"
"Now do hush," said Janet. "I have not come in an unkind spirit. You must really listen, Bridget, to what I have come to say. I am the very first of your schoolfellows to visit you, and would I trouble to come if I did not mean it kindly?"
Janet's voice was the essence of gentle calm. It affected poor tempest-tossed Biddy, who jumped down from her imaginary horse, and leant up against the window-sill, a strikingly handsome, but defiant looking young sinner.
"I suppose you do mean it kindly," she said, "and you are the first of the girls to look me up. But you are sure Mrs. Freeman did not send you?"
"She knows that I have come, but she certainly did not send me."
"Well, I suppose it's good-natured of you. I thought Dolly Collingwood would have come to me before now, but it's 'out of sight, out of mind' with her as with the rest of them."
"Dorothy, at the present moment, is with Evelyn Percival."