“I wish you could,” she said eagerly. “Oh, I wish you would come to Trelint and see her, and see our house, and Betsy and—everything. I am sure you would like it. Miss Potts loves Trelint. She told me she felt at home there at once, and ever so happy, and she has never wanted to go anywhere else since. I am sure you would love Trelint if you came.”
“I feel sure I should,” said Mr. Winter. “Perhaps I will come some day. I dare say I shall; in fact, I have been thinking about it a good deal.”
“Oh, have you? How lovely!” cried Priscilla, really pleased. “It won’t seem so hard to leave Porthcallis now.”
For the last days had come, and the end of the visit was very near. Already there had been talk of trains, and some farewell visits had been paid, and they all felt very sad, for they loved the little place.
“Of course it isn’t as fine in some ways as Porthcallis,” she remarked, after a short pause, beginning to wonder if she had painted home too glowingly, and so prepared a disappointment for a new-comer to the place. “There is no”—she had nearly added “sea there,” but checked herself just in time—“nothing, I mean, very famous, like ruins, and tombs, and castles, and things, but it is very—very homey.”
“I am not particularly fond of sight-seeing,” said Mr. Winter, “and I would prefer a home to a ruin. It seems to me I have been living in the latter too long already,” he added, half to himself. “Now let us go and find your mother. I want to ask her to bring you all to tea with me at my house to-morrow. I hope you will not mind giving up a part of your last whole day. Would you like to come, little one?”
For a moment Priscilla was speechless. Even she, child as she was, understood a little what this invitation must have cost him. But she quickly recovered herself and remembered her manners.
“Oh, I would love to!” she cried warmly; “we all would, I know.” But she added in her own sedate little way: “Won’t we be a great trouble to you?”
“Not a trouble, child.”