“You’ll see how sweet I mean to be to her, Aunt Lucy,” she said gaily; and Miss Merivale did not notice that the gaiety was forced. “I’ll go up now and send her down to you. I wonder why Pauline is keeping her.”
She hastened away, and Miss Merivale sat down in the porch and put her hand on the head of Bruno, Tom’s black Newfoundland, who had come to her side with an inquiring glance in his beautiful eyes.
“Your master will be home soon, Bruno,” she said. The dog wagged his tail, but still kept looking at her. She went on speaking to him. “And everything is coming right, Bruno,” she said. “I am glad I was silent. It’s all coming right. We shall all be happy together.”
She looked round as she spoke, and saw Rhoda coming down the broad shallow stairs into the wainscoted hall. A tender smile brightened her face as she watched her. She had lost the feeling that she was doing her an injustice by not acknowledging her as her niece. As Tom’s wife she would be as a daughter to her. She would have everything that was hers by right.
Rhoda stepped rather slowly down, her head bent, a line of anxiety showing between her clearly pencilled dark brows. She knew something about Pauline that she was beginning to feel Miss Merivale should know. Yet she had no wish to disclose the secret she had accidentally learnt. At first it had amused her, it amused her still. In the brief, decidedly unpleasant tete-a-tete which Rose had just put an end to, she had found it easy to bear Pauline’s half-veiled taunts. Ever since her visit to Leyton she had understood the bitter animosity which Miss Smythe had shown her from the first. It was not altogether a personal dislike. Rhoda was sure that she would have treated in the same manner any girl who was poor and yet was not ashamed of her poverty or of her friends.
“Rhoda.”
Miss Merivale’s gentle call made her hurry her footsteps. Her face had a wonderfully sweet look on it as she approached Miss Merivale. Miss Merivale’s kindness had completely won the girl’s heart. She was so happy at Woodcote that sometimes she felt as if it must be a dream from which she would awake to find herself in the lonely bedroom in Acacia Road with the boys’ cots empty, and a long London day of searching for work to look forward to.
“Sit down here beside me, dear,” Miss Merivale said, taking her hand and drawing her down on the seat. “Just look at Bruno. He has been asking me when Tom is coming back. I tell him he will be back in a few moments.”
Rhoda had turned her head quickly away to look at the dog, but Miss Merivale saw how her colour rose, making even the little ear pink. And she smiled to herself.
“I hope Tom will be able to go with us to-morrow,” she went on, without giving Rhoda time to speak. “I want to take Miss Smythe to Bingley woods. It is too early for a picnic, but we could drive over there directly after lunch. Ah, there is Tom.”