CHAPTER II
OAKLANDS
"Oh, I wish the train would be quick," said a small child, addressing an old man-servant who stood rather anxiously guarding her, as she stamped impatiently up and down upon the platform. "What makes it so long, James? I want to see her—because I shall know directly if she's nice; if she isn't, I'll be naughty every day, and make her just as unhappy as ever I can, and then she'll go away like all the others have. I told daddy so this morning."
"I expect you'll like her, miss," answered the man, with a grim smile, as he gazed with affectionate amusement at the spoilt child in front of him.
"If she's nasty, I'll hate her—so there."
"Come, come, missy, don't talk like that," he interposed.
"Yes, I shall—look! there's the train coming, the signal has gone down, now let's see, James, who can find her first; I feel sure she'll be horrid, and have an ugly old bonnet on."
The train steamed into the station, puffing and snorting vehemently as it came to a standstill, and in a few minutes the carriages had emptied themselves of their passengers.
The old man-servant and little Ellice Medhurst scanned carefully each possible looking person who alighted, to see if they answered to their ideas of the expected governess they had come to meet.
She had sent no description of herself, she had not thought of it, and in fact her employer had forgotten her intention to send to the station, until that afternoon Miss Woodford's future pupil, with a wilfulness which characterised her, had insisted upon going herself to meet her, not from politeness, but curiosity. What sort of person she was likely to expect she had not waited to inquire, but telling James he was to come with her—"Mamma said so"—she set off with him in the little pony-carriage to fetch the new governess to Oaklands.