“You will like Hermione,” I said to Augusta. I thought she would. I thought Hermione’s precise ways would rather please Augusta. The carriage, however, did not meet us at the church, for it was arranged that we were to go home first and have lunch at Hedgerow House, and then were to walk in a body the two miles which separated us from The Grange, Squire Aldyce’s beautiful old residence.
We went there in high spirits. Everything was joyful that day. Here more and more presents awaited us. Really it was marvellous. Alex managed to whisper to me, “Have you no eye for contrasts?”
“Contrasts?” I asked, turning round and giving him a flashing glance.
“Between this Christmas and last,” he said.
I felt annoyed. I had been trying so very hard to keep in the best of humours—to be good, if I, poor naughty Dumps, could really and truly be good—and now the spirit of naughtiness was once more awakened. Oh, of course, this was a glorious time, and I ought to be delighted; but the ache had returned to my heart, the longing to be in my own little room looking at my mother’s miniature, the wish for the old desolation when she, as I said to myself, had been honoured and her memory respected.
I stood in a brown study for a minute or two, and as I stood thus Hermione came up to me and asked me if I would not like to go away with her to her room. I was very glad of the reprieve. She took my hand and we ran upstairs. When we found ourselves in her pretty room she made me sit down in the cosiest chair she could find, poked the fire, and squatted herself on the hearth-rug. She wore a lovely dress of very pale Liberty green silk, and looked, with her aristocratic small face and beautiful hair, like a picture.
“Well, Dumps,” she said, “and so you have solved the mystery?”
“You knew it at that time?” I said.
“Knew it? Of course I did! It was the greatest amazement to me when Miss Donnithorne said, ‘You are not to tell her; her father doesn’t wish it to be known.’”
“Then she did not want to have it kept a secret?”