It is to be hoped that almost any little girl of the present day would have more sense than to be influenced as Lucy was. And yet I am not sure that one could not find both children and grown-up people doing quite as foolish things as going to a gipsy-woman about a lost thimble. Indeed, if there can be said to be any sense in the matter, there would seem to be two or three grains more in going to a live woman for information than in asking a dead table.
But Lucy had never been taught any better: indeed, what teaching she had ever received on the subject had been the other way.
You may easily see how Lady Lucy was prepared to fall into the snare which the gipsy-woman had laid for her. She no more doubted that the woman could tell where the thimble was, than she doubted that she had lost it. And she felt more and more that she would give any thing she had to get it into her own possession again: first, because, despite Cousin Deborah's kindness, she could not divest herself of the idea that she should be severely punished if it were known that she had lost it; and secondly, because she could not bear to part with the thimble her dear mamma had used when a little girl like herself.
That the gipsy might impose upon her, or that, even if she found out where the thimble was, she might not be able to get it back again, were matters which she never thought of. Her whole mind was occupied with contriving how she might get down to the spring to-morrow without the knowledge of Cousin Deborah. And she arrived at home before she had come to any satisfactory decision.
[CHAPTER IV.]
"THE post-boy have been here and brought some letters," said Jenny, as she met Lucy in the hall. "I should not wonder if Mrs. Corbet had news of my lord your father. Anyhow, you were to go to her as soon as you came in. She is sitting in the library."
Lucy would have found it hard to say whether she were most alarmed or delighted with this news. She walked very soberly through the gallery, where the portraits of all the long-dead Stantons and Corbets hung against the wall, with suits of armour and groups of strange weapons suspended between them, and tapped softly at the half-open library door.
"Come in, my love," answered Cousin Deborah's cheery voice, in a tone which removed some, at least, of Lucy's fears. "See, here is a treasure for you,—a letter from your dear father, and directed to yourself."
"Really for me, Cousin Debby?" asked Lucy, looking at the direction, and then turning the letter over and examining the broad seal. "I never had a letter of my own in my life."
"Really for you; and I hope you will appreciate your father's goodness in taking so much pains for you. I assure you I was twice—yes, three times—as old as you before I ever had a letter of my own. But open it, and let us hear the news. I did not examine it, because I thought you would like the pleasure of breaking the seal yourself."