“Effie, I never could have said that about Miss Gertrude.”
“No, you never said it, but I gathered it—less from what you said than from what you didn’t say, however. Has Miss Gertrude changed, do you think?”
“No, oh no! she is just the very same. And yet I am not sure. I remember thinking when I first saw her that she was changed. She looks older, I think. I wonder if she will come to-day? She promised.”
“But it rains so heavily,” said Effie. “No, I don’t think she will come to-day. It would not be wise.”
But Effie was mistaken. She had hardly spoken when the door opened, and Gertrude entered.
“Through all the rain!” exclaimed Effie and Christie, in a breath.
“Yes, I thought you would be glad to see me this dull day,” said Miss Gertrude, laughing. “I am none the worse for the rain, but I can’t say as much for the horses, however. But Mr Sherwood was obliged to leave in the train this afternoon, and I begged to come in the carriage with him. Peter is to come for me again when he has taken him to the station. See what I have brought you,” she added, opening the basket she carried in her hand. There were several things for Christie in the basket, but the something which Miss Gertrude meant was a bunch of buttercups placed against a spray of fragrant cedar and a few brown birch leaves.
“We gathered them in the orchard yesterday. They are the very last of the season. We gathered them because Claude said you once told him that they reminded you of home; and then you told him of a shady place where they used to grow, and of the birch-tree by the burn. I had heard about the burn myself, but not about the buttercups.”
Coming as they did, the little tuft of wild flowers pleased Christie better than the fairest bouquet of hothouse exotics could have done.
Effie laughed.