The children, of course, were in ecstasies, though once or twice they glanced up at Lettice, half ashamed of their own delight; but she smiled back at them so kindly that they were quickly reassured; and a whisper which she overheard of Lotty’s gave her greater pleasure than she could have expressed.
“Lettice is getting like mamma,” the child said. “When she is so kind, she always makes me think of mamma.”
And Lettice always was kind when she felt thoroughly pleased with herself, as she did just now. If only her foundation had been the rock of real principle, and not the sands of passing moods and impulses!
“Don’t you think, Lettice,” said Nina, in a low voice, venturing a little further—“don’t you think we are going to be happy—at least, peaceful—here?”
Lettice had not the heart to repulse her.
“I shall be very glad, dear, if you feel so,” she said, “and I am sure I want to make the best of things. If—if there were not that unhappy Miss Branksome looming in the distance—in the nearness, rather! I know exactly what she will be like. I know those decayed gentlewomen so well. Tall and lank and starved-looking, always having headaches and nerves, and tears in her eyes for nothing, and yet everlastingly interfering. Of course, she must interfere. It’s her business; it’s what she’s there for.”
But before Nina had time to reply, the carriage stopped. They had reached their destination.
Faxleham Cottage was what its name implied—a real cottage. It had no drive or “approach,” save the simple, old-fashioned little footpath, leading from the garden-gate to the wide, low porch entrance. But unpretending as it was, an exclamation of pleasure broke involuntarily from the lips of its new tenants, as they stepped out of the carriage and entered the sweet, trim, and yet luxuriant little garden, gay with early flowers, not a weed to be seen, bright and smiling in the soft evening sunlight.
Lettice, too, felt the pleasant influence.
“How I wish mamma could see it!” was her unspoken thought. “If it were she who was to welcome us instead of—” And as she went forward she glanced before her apprehensively, half expecting to see realised the unattractive personage she had ingeniously constructed in her imagination.