“Home.” Eve looked a little crestfallen as she echoed the word. “You don’t live very far off, I think, Mrs. Vansittart?”
“No. Only an hour’s journey. We live in a region of pine and heather; and I have a garden and an arboretum, which are my delight. But our country is not any prettier than yours, so I mustn’t boast of it.”
“This is not my country,” said Eve. “I feel like a foreigner here, though we have lived at the Homestead a good many years. Yorkshire is my country.”
“But surely you must prefer Sussex. Yorkshire is so far away from everything.”
The two girls came to Eve and hung about her. They had put on their gloves and little fur tippets—spoil of rabbit or cat—and were ready for the start. Mrs. Vansittart noticed their coarse serge frocks, their homely woollen stockings and village-made boots. They were tidily clad, and that was all that could be said of them. A village tradesman’s children would have been smarter; and yet they looked like young ladies.
“These are your two youngest sisters, and you have two older—five daughters in all,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “Colonel Marchant ought to be very proud of such a family. And have you no brothers?”
“None in England,” Eve answered, with a touch of sadness, and then without another moment’s delay she began to make her adieux.
“I am going to see you home, if you will let me,” said Vansittart, in the hall; “I heard you say that Colonel Marchant is at home, and I should like to seize the opportunity of making his acquaintance.”
A faint cloud spread itself over Eve’s happy face, and she was somewhat slow in replying. “I am sure father will be very pleased to see you.”
“And I’m sure you won’t like father when you see him,” cried Peggy, the irrepressible.