“That you certainly do, dear.”
“And you are so good to her—so wonderfully good!” continued Augusta.
“Never mind that, my child; I could never be anything else. And Nan owes me nothing; I have said that before.”
Augusta kissed her aunt, and presently ran upstairs to the schoolroom. The children were having breakfast when she entered.
“Hurrah! Good news,” said Augusta. “Of course, that is how people take it. You thought, all of you, that I would be going back to father and mother in a few weeks’ time. Well, I am not; I am to stay here for a year—a year, positive. I am to be with you day and night for twelve whole months. When you go to the country I will go with you, and when you come back from the country I will come back with you. And I am to have regular lessons from this at school; and—— Oh, dear me! Nancy, you are glad, whoever else is sorry.”
“Yes—of course,” said Nancy. She said it in a trembling voice, and her face turned from white to red, and then from red to white again.
“Does she not look enraptured,” said Augusta, turning with laughing eyes to Kitty.
Kitty made no reply. She was glad on the whole that her cousin should stay. “The more the merrier” was her motto. She felt almost annoyed with Nan for the peculiarity of her attitude.
But the tidings that Augusta was to stay with them was completely eclipsed by other news, which filled the hearts of the two little girls, Kitty and Nora, with untold bliss.
“What do you think?” said Kitty, rushing into the room just as Nora and Nan were putting on their hats to go to school. “Uncle Peter is coming here to-day. He will stay for a fortnight or three weeks, mother says. Oh, this is heavenly! I am nearly off my head with delight.”