Dora took both the letter and the card, read each—in a state of blissful excitement—and then took possession of the five-pound note.
“To think of my mother being a really existing person!” she said, with a happy little laugh. “Oh, Miss Skimmers, I can scarcely believe it. I shall go at once, at once.”
She was as good as her word. Within the space of half an hour, she had packed her small belongings into a shabby valise—a relic of her “first-floor” days—sent them over to the railway station by a housemaid, said good-by to the house cat, her only friend and companion in the dreary days she was leaving behind her, and had shaken the dust of the Skimmers’ establishment from her feet forever.
The day no longer seemed hot and suffocating, and the sun no longer hurt her eyes as she walked down the dusty, glaring, treeless road to the railway station—she was going to her mother, that poor, sorely tried, wonderful mother, who was an existent, after all, and whose poverty had kept them so long apart. For by some strange process of reasoning which was not compatible with the facts of the case, she had arrived at the conclusion that poverty was the sole explanation of her mother’s long neglect of her.
“Poor little mother!” she thought, as she hurried out; “it took all she could spare to pay for my education, of course, and she could not afford to waste money in coming to see me. What a dear she is to have done so much! But never mind, I’ll make it all up to you, and there will be two now to fight the battle, and as the proverb says, ‘Many hands make light work.’ I can teach music, and no end of things, and—you’ll see!—it won’t be long before I find pupils and am in a position to give you a nice little home and at least some of the comforts a lady should have.”
For, of course, her mother was a lady; there could be no possible doubt of that, considering that in the old days she had had her affairs attended to by a family solicitor and was spoken of as a person of considerable importance—a lady in reduced circumstances, it is true, but still a lady. In her mind’s eye, Dora could almost see her already—a sweet-faced, sweet-voiced motherly old lady with gray hair and mild eyes; a dear, soft-treading, soft-speaking, gentle old darling, with a tiny white cap on her head and such beautiful shapely old hands.
“How I shall love her; how I shall love her!” said the girl, with a little rush of happy tears; then she laughed aloud in her happiness, and, catching sight of the station at last, quickened her steps, until she was almost running when she finally entered it. Going up to the ticket office, she purchased her ticket.
“Have to change at Morecome Junction,” said the clerk, in answer to her query; “and if you catch the connection, you ought to be at Crumplesea about six-forty. If you miss it, you’ll have to stop at Morecome the night; there’s no other trains to Crumplesea until the morning. Train for Morecome’s coming in now.
“Number four platform—and you’ll have to step lively if you want to catch it.”
“Thank you,” said Dora, as she gathered up her ticket and the change. In another moment, she was flying down the stairs to the train and to the beginning of the strange new life that lay before her.