The Children's Pilgrimage

by L. T. Meade

"I hate you, Aunt Lydia Purcell!" he repeated, "I hate you! and I'm not going to be afraid of you. You said you'd give our Toby a yard of rope; if you do you'll be a murderer. I think you're so wicked, you're one already."

Those words, striking at some hidden, deep-seated pain in Lydia's heart, caused her to wince and turn pale. She rose from her seat, shaking her apron as she did so. But before she left the room she cast a look of unutterable aversion on both the children.

Cecile now knew what she had before her. She, Maurice, and Toby had just a month to prepare—just a month to get ready for the great task of Cecile's life. At the end of a month they must set forth—three pilgrims without a guide. Cecile felt that it was a pity this long journey which they must take in secret should begin in the winter. Had she the power of choice, she would have put off so weary a pilgrimage until the days were long and the weather mild. But there was no choice in the matter now; just when the days were shortest and worst, just at Christmas time, they must set out. Cecile was a very wise child for her years. Her father had called her dependable. She was dependable. She had thought, and prudence, and foresight. She made many schemes now. At night, as she lay awake in her attic bedroom, in the daytime, as she walked by Maurice's side, she pondered them. She had two great anxieties,—first, how to find the way; second, how to make the money last. Fifteen pounds her stepmother had given her to find Lovedy with. Fifteen pounds seemed to such an inexperienced head as Cecile's a very large sum of money—indeed, quite an inexhaustible sum. But Mrs. D'Albert had assured her that it was not a large sum at all. It was not even a large sum for one, she said, even for Cecile herself. To make it sufficient she must walk a great deal, and sleep at the smallest village inns, and eat the plainest food. And how much shorter, then, would the money go, if it had to supply two with food and the other necessities of the journey? Cecile resolved that, if possible, they would not touch the money laid in the Russia-leather purse until they really got into France. Her present plan was to walk to London. London was not so very far out of Kent, and once in London, the place where she had lived all, or almost all her life, she would feel at home. Cecile even hoped she might be able to earn a little money in London, money enough to take Maurice and Toby and herself into France. She had not an idea how the money was to be earned, but even if she had to sweep a crossing, she thought she could do it. And, for their walk into London, there was that precious half sovereign, which kind Mr. Preston had given Maurice, and which Cecile had put by in the same box which held the leather purse. They might have to spend a shilling or two of that half sovereign, and for the rest, Cecile began to consider what they could do to save now. It was useless to expect such foresight on Maurice's part. But for herself, whenever she got an apple or a nut, she put it carefully aside. It was not that her little teeth did not long to close in the juicy fruit, or to crack the hard shell and secure the kernel. But far greater than these physical longings was her earnest desire to keep true to her solemn promise to the dead—to find, and give her mother's message and her mother's gift to the beautiful, wayward English girl who yet had broken that mother's heart.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CUPBOARD IN THE WALL.

But poor Cecile had greater anxieties than the fear of her journey before her.

Mrs. D'Albert—when she gave her that Russia-leather purse—had said to her solemnly, and with considerable fear:

"Keep it from Lydia Purcell. Let Lydia know nothing about it, for Lydia loves money so well that no earthly consideration would make her spare you. Lydia would take the money, and all my life-work, and all your hope of finding Lovedy, would be at an end."

This, in substance, was Mrs. D'Albert's speech; and Cecile had not been many hours in Lydia Purcell's company without finding out how true those words were.