“Oh—but so expensive!” said Florence.
“I managed splendidly out of the money you gave me yesterday,” said Susie. “You know what a delicious dinner we had, and how Miss Hudson did enjoy it. Well, there was enough over to make this good breakfast. And now you must hurry down, both of you, to eat it.”
Florence sprang to her feet.
“I don’t mind poverty, after all,” she said, “if only I could spend it with you, Susie, and with your father.”
“You shall come back to us, and whenever you come, you shall have a welcome—the best in all the world,” said Susie. “And oh! do, my dear Florence, remember, when you are making orange marmalade that you cut the peel thin enough!”
“Yes, yes,” said Florence. “But I don’t think somehow,” she added, with a dash of her old spirit, “that making orange marmalade is my métier.”
The girls dressed and went downstairs. The Colonel was waiting to receive them. Miss Hudson had had her breakfast and gone off to her pupils. The new-laid eggs were duly appreciated. The ham was pronounced delicious.
Presently, a cab came to the door and Brenda and Florence got in. Mr Timmins was to meet them at the railway station. The Colonel took both their hands as they were leaving.
“Good-bye, my dears,” he said. “God bless you both. From what Mr Timmins tells me, I think you will be able to manage in the future; but if ever in any possible way you need a friend, you have but to remember me, who would love you both, my dear girls, were you as poor as the proverbial church mouse. And now, may a father have his privilege?”
He kissed each girl on her forehead, wrung their hands, and put them into the cab. As to Susie, she was wiping the tears from her eyes. The cab started on its way to the railway station and the pretty brown house disappeared from view. The different inhabitants of Langdale, who had known the girls in their wealth, saw them as they went by. Mrs Fortescue’s Bridget was so much excited that she opened one of the bedroom windows and shrieked out—