"I go up to it from Eagles' Nest to-morrow," was the reply. "Perhaps not to remain long in it at present. I am not yet able to form my plans."
"Not able to form your plans!" echoed Daisy, in her saucy, engaging way; her bright eyes gazing questioningly into his. "Why, I should have thought you might have laid your plans on the first of January for all the year, having no one to consult but yourself."
"But if I am uncertain—capricious?" returned he, in half-jesting tones.
"Ah, that's a different thing. I should not have thought you that at all. But—pray tell me, Mr. Atkinson! What do the people down here say, now they have found out that it was you, yourself, who lived amongst them three years ago?"
"They say nothing to me. I dare say they conjecture that I had my reasons for it. Or perhaps they think I was only amusing myself," continued George Atkinson, glancing at Edina.
Edina smiled at him in return. All's well that ends well: and that incognito business had turned out very well in the end. To her only had George Atkinson spoken out fully of the motives that swayed him, the impressions he received.
Edina stood near them in all her finery. She had never been so grand in her life: and perhaps had never looked so well. A lilac-silk dress, and a lovely pink rose in her bosom, nestling amidst white lace. Edina was rich now—as she looked upon riches. Seven thousand pounds, and all her own! She had held out strenuously against receiving it, pointing out to George Atkinson that it would be wrong and unfair to give it to her, as her aunt Ann had never meant to leave her any money at all. But Edina's arguments and objections proved of no avail. Mr. Atkinson quietly closed his ears, and transferred the money to her, in spite of her protests. The first use Edina made of her cheque-book was to send a hundred pounds to Mr. Pine, that he might distribute it amongst the poor of Trennach.
Like George Atkinson, as he had just avowed, Edina had not formed her plans. She could not decide where her chief residence should be. Mrs. Raynor and Charles naturally pressed her to remain at Eagles' Nest: but she hesitated. A wish to have a home of her own, some little place of her own setting up, was making itself heard in her heart: and she could visit Eagles' Nest from time to time. Should the little homestead be near to them?—or at Trennach? It was this that she could not yet decide. But she must do so very shortly, for she wished to give them her decision on the morrow.
Turning away from the busy talkers, from the excited children; Kate in white, and little Bob, not in a long skirted blue coat and yellow stockings, but in black velvet and knickerbockers; Edina wandered away, her mind full, and sat down on a bench shaded by clustering trees, out of sight and sound of all. The small opening in the trees before her disclosed a glimpse of the far-off scenery—the Kentish hills, with their varying foliage, lying under the calm, pale blue sky.
"I like Trennach," she argued with herself. "I love it, for it was my girlhood's home; and I love those who are in it. I could almost say with Ruth, 'The people there shall be my people, and their God my God.' On the other hand are the claims of Eagles' Nest, and of Frank and Daisy. I love them all. Mary Raynor says she cannot get on unless I am near her; and perhaps the young ones need me too. If I only knew!"