“Ezzackly, miss,” said Hocking stolidly, as though that was what he had been arguing, and did not open his lips again.
At the station Priscilla kissed Betsy, shook hands with Hocking, and then went with Geoffrey on to the platform, while her father took the tickets. She wished now that Geoffrey was coming too, and she told him so.
“I wish I was,” said Geoffrey; “but, you see, I’ve got to wait and bring mother and Nurse. If I hadn’t, I’d have gone to old Winter and jolly well told him what I thought of him for frightening a child as small as Loveday. I call it cowardly, and—and he ought to be told of it too.”
Priscilla gasped at the mere thought of Geoffrey’s daring. But after she had said good-bye to him, and he had driven off homewards with Hocking, and she and her father had settled down comfortably in a carriage to themselves, her thoughts flew again to what he had said about Mr. Winter, and by-and-by a thought came into her mind, which grew and grew, until before long it had become a very firm resolution.
If Geoffrey thought it right to go to Mr. Winter and speak for Loveday, it was right for her to do so. She could not speak as severely as Geoffrey said he should, and perhaps it might be better not to; but she could say something, and she made up her mind to go on the very first opportunity—that is, if her father did not do so—and ask to see Mr. Winter, and then apologise for what Loveday had done, and ask him to forgive her.
So occupied was she with this plan that she never once spoke all the way to Porthcallis, and her father at last looked quite anxiously over his paper at her, so serious and grave was her face, and her eyes so very troubled.
“You aren’t feeling homesick, are you?” he asked gently.
Priscilla looked up with a start and then a smile.
“No, father,” she said brightly, “’cause mother and Geoffrey will come soon, and you too.”
And after that she tried to laugh and talk a good deal, for she did not want any one to guess her secret.