"Well, the duckling shall come, too," shouted heedless Annie; and Kitty, with the full weight and delirious importance of her secret radiating all over her stout little person, slowly returned to the other members of the picnic party.
CHAPTER VII.
THE STORY BOOK LADY.
Annie found the road hot and the way long. As she said, she was a very good walker, and was never daunted by difficulties or dangers either real or imaginary. She was impressed by Boris's bright little face, and Kitty's story of his fidelity to the path of duty touched her quick and affectionate nature. Annie Forest, the grown-up girl, was very like Annie Forest, the child. She was still intensely impulsive, wayward, and eager. Her faults were in a great manner subdued, but they were not eradicated. She was intensely affectionate, brave, and true as steel; but she was apt to be both heedless and thoughtless. When rushing away to rescue Boris, it never once entered into her head that the secret of her absence might prove very troublesome to poor Kitty, and that the rest of the party might suffer uneasiness on her account. Without any adventure from bull or bull-dog, without endangering her life in the bog, which turned out to be almost non-existent at this time of year, she reached the Towers at the most sultry time of the day, and appeared upon the scene between one and two o'clock, a tired, flushed, and very thirsty Annie. All during her walk she pictured Boris's state of despair. She saw in her mind's eye a vision of his little, flushed, tear-stained face. She thought of Nell, too, and imagined the rapture with which the ugly duckling would greet her, the deliverer of the oppressed.
Annie entered the Towers by a side entrance, and, skirting a pretty, shady lawn, approached the house by the nearest way. As she did so, she was attracted by voices which seemed to proceed from out of a clump of trees. She stepped close to the spot from where the sound proceeded, and, craning her neck, looked over the thick laurustinus bushes, which enclosed a very tiny lawn or plot of grass.
Seated here, in the utmost peace and apparent contentment, were the poor victims for whom she had exerted herself so terribly. Nell was lying full length on her back on the grass. Boris was seated tailorwise on the ground a little way off. Nell had a white rat curled up in her hair and another nestling in her neck. Boris was feeding some white hares and some pet rabbits. The children were eagerly talking to their animals, and Annie had to own to herself that there was nothing in the least unhappy or even morbid in the sound of either of the voices.
For a moment the children's perfect happiness almost vexed her. It seemed provoking to have taken that long, exhausting walk for nothing, and oh! how hungry and thirsty, how very hungry and thirsty she felt.
The next instant, however, her good-nature asserted itself. She said "Hullo!" pushed her way through the laurustinus hedge, and stood in the midst of the group.
Nell started into a sitting position, tumbling the white rats on to her lap. She looked up at Annie. What a tumbled, dishevelled, hot, but oh, what a pretty strange lady was this! Nell worshipped beauty with the passion of a very hot and fervent little soul. She had scarcely noticed Annie in the schoolroom, but now her heart went out to her with a great throb.