"Where's the cat?" she asked, looking round.
"Godfrey has taken her up to the nursery," said Betty, "partly to show her to Nanna, and partly because we thought it would be better for her to be quiet up there than down here."
"Oh, Mum—do say that she can stay up there," cried Timmy pleadingly. "I hate the thought of her being in that dark old stable!"
"Very well; put her in the night nursery."
Even as she spoke, Janet was still gazing at her eldest step-daughter. Betty certainly looked extraordinarily charming this afternoon. It showed that the child required more change than she had had for many a long day. They had got too much, all of them, into thinking of her as a stand-by. After all she was only eight and twenty! Janet, with a sigh, looked back to the days when she had been eight and twenty, a very happy, independent young lady indeed, not long before she had met and married her quiet, wool-gathering John, so losing her independence for ever.
"I suppose you haven't heard the great news," she exclaimed, forgetting that Timmy was there.
"What news?" asked Betty.
She glanced at her step-mother. Surely Janet hadn't been crying? Janet never cried. She had not cried since that terrible day when the news had come of George's death.
"What news?" she asked again.
"Mr. Barton—I really can't call him Lionel yet—came over this afternoon and—and—"