The cold, clear afternoon air touching their healthy faces, and Jack Frost nipping their noses, raced Miss West and Kate Dancox up and down the hawthorn walk. It had pleased that arbitrary young damsel, who was still very childish, to enter a protest against going beyond the grounds that fine winter’s day; she would be in the hawthorn walk, or nowhere; and she would run races there. As Miss West gave in to her whims for peace’ sake in things not important, and as she was young enough herself not to dislike running, to the hawthorn walk they went.
Captain Monk was recovering rapidly. His sudden illness had been caused by drinking some cold cider when some out-door exercise had made him dangerously hot. The alarm and apprehension had now subsided; and Mrs. Hamlyn, arriving three days ago in answer to the hasty summons, was thinking of returning to London.
“You are cheating!” called out Kate, flying off at a tangent to cross her governess’s path. “You’ve no right to get before me!”
“Gently,” corrected Miss West. “My dear, we have run enough for to-day.”
“We haven’t, you ugly, cross old thing! Aunt Eliza says you are ugly. And—”
The young lady’s amenities were cut short by finding herself suddenly lifted off her feet by Mr. Harry Carradyne, who had come behind them.
“Let me alone, Harry! You are always coming where you are not wanted. Aunt Eliza says so.”
A sudden light, as of mirth, illumined Harry Carradyne’s fresh, frank countenance. “Aunt Eliza says all those things, does she? Well, Miss Kate, she also says something else—that you are now to go indoors.”
“What for? I shan’t go in.”
“Oh, very well. Then that dandified silk frock for the new year that the dressmaker is waiting to try on can be put aside until midsummer.”