The next day, when the study hour came, Esther took a large basket of stockings out into the woods with her to darn. "I must try and mend these again," she said. "We don't seem to be going to have any new ones," and while Penelope with some trouble made her way through a chapter of the Invasion of the Crimea, and the younger ones collected fir-cones to take home for the kitchen fire, Esther sorted out and darned a motley collection of stockings of various sizes and every variety of shade of washed-out black and brown. She darned them quickly and thoroughly; but the great excrescences of blue, brown, grey, or black darning-wool would have brought terror to the heart of any one who suffered from tender feet. "There," she said, laying aside the last pair with a sigh, "at any rate we shall be sound if we are shabby. I wish, though, the darns didn't show quite so much," gazing regretfully at a large light-blue patch in the middle of one of Poppy's black stockings.
After that the Crimea was abandoned, and they all fell to talking of the strange new life which was drawing so close to them now, and by degrees, and in spite of their first dread, was so exciting, so full of interest, and all manner of possibilities.
CHAPTER III.
And now at last the parting was over, and the new life fairly begun. Esther, Penelope, Angela, and Poppy sat alone in a third-class carriage, looking out with blurred and smarting eyes at the fields and hedges rushing past them, at telegraph wires bowing and rising, at people and cattle and houses, and wondered if it could all be real or if they were only dreaming.
They had been very sad for the last few days, for the parting had been a painful wrench. In spite of all its drawbacks, the little house at Framley was their home, and they shed many bitter tears when they bade good-bye to it, and the woods and the walks, and all their well-known play-places. They wept, too, at leaving their mother, and even Lydia, cross, careless Lydia, for, after all, their mother and Lydia were the only two beings they knew well, and to be obliged to leave them and go entirely to utter strangers, in a quite unknown place, was very alarming.
"No one knows what it may be like at Dorsham," said Esther tragically, "and we—and we are not like children accustomed to going about. We don't know what are the right things to do—you know what I mean, we don't know how to behave, at least I don't. I hate having to meet any one in the street, for I never know what to say or do; and if I don't speak I know I am rude, and they think all sorts of things about me, and then I am miserable, and—and it'll be like that all the time at Cousin Charlotte's."
The other children looked awed until Penelope brightened up a little. "Never mind," she said hopefully, "we will go on just as we do now. After all, we can't be so very very dreadful, for mother is a lady, and knows, and we aren't wild savages; and Cousin Charlotte must tell us if we don't do things right, and we must remember for another time. Don't you think that will be all right, Esther?"
"I wish I could remember all the things Aunt Julia used to tell us," sighed Angela regretfully. "If we could we should know exactly what to do; but she was always telling me things and I've got them all mixed up."
"Will Tousin Charlotte whip us if we don't do right?" asked Poppy, in an awe-stricken voice.