“Oh, ah! Now at last we have come to the bottom of the mystery. And I suppose you thought I’d pet you and make much of you?”
“I didn’t. I thought you’d scold me and be very cross. I came to you as a punishment, for Polly always said you were the crossest woman she ever met.”
“Polly said that? Humph! Now eat up your breakfast quickly, Daisy. I’m going out. Don’t stir from this room until I come back.”
Mrs. Cameron, who had come down-stairs in her bonnet, slammed the dining-room door after her, walked across the hall, and let herself out. It did not take her many minutes to reach the telegraph office. From, there she sent a brief message to Helen Maybright:
“Sorry your father is ill. Expect me this evening with Daisy Rymple.”
CHAPTER XIII.
VERY ROUGH WEATHER.
With all her easy and languishing ways, Flower Dalrymple had often gone through rough times. Her life in Australia had given to her experiences both of the extreme of luxury and the extreme of roughing, but never in the course of her young life did she go through a more uncomfortable journey than that from Mrs. Cameron’s house in Bath to Sleepy Hollow. It was true that Scorpion, Mrs. Cameron, and Flower, traveled first-class; it was true also that where it was necessary for them to drive the best carriages to be procured were at their service; but, as on all and every occasion Scorpion was king of the ceremonies these arrangements did not add to Flower’s comfort. Mrs. Cameron, who felt seriously angry with the young girl, addressed all her conversation to the dog, and as the dog elected to sit on Flower’s lap, and snapped and snarled whenever she moved, and as Mrs. Cameron’s words were mostly directed through the medium of Scorpion at her, her position was not an agreeable one.