“Go I will,” said Augusta to herself when she had finished reading the letter. “I would not lose the fun for all the world. But now, how shall I manage it?”
She sat with Flora’s letter upon her lap and gave herself up to meditation. It was a lovely day, and the window of her pretty bedroom was wide open. The sky was blue, and the trees a brilliant green. The lawns, which rolled away right down to the end of the paddock, were smooth as velvet. Presently a little figure crossed one of them and came slowly towards the house. Augusta’s eyes contracted and her brows met in a frown as she watched the little figure.
“It is odd how I dislike Nan,” she said to herself. “Poor child, I suppose she is quite passable, and even agreeable to others, but she always does manage to rub me the wrong way. She could be wonderfully useful now, however. If I could get her to run to the post with my answer I should feel more or less relieved; and if things are eventually found out, and it is discovered she has a finger in the pie, so much the better for me.”
Augusta sprang up, put her head out of the window, and called to Nancy.
“Come here, Nancy; I want you,” she cried.
Nancy ran towards her, standing under the window and looking up.
“What are you doing?” asked Augusta.
“Oh! lots of things; but nothing very, very special. Do you want me, Gussie?”
“Yes; there is no one else to send, and I just want some one to run to the village and put a letter I am about to write into the post for me. Will you go? It would be awfully good-natured of you.”
“Yes; of course I will.”