And something told me that the best I could do was to leave dear granny alone for a little with the faithful servant who had shared her joys and sorrows for so long.
So I took my own letter—Sharley's letter I mean, and ran upstairs to fetch my hat and jacket.
'I'm going out for a little, grandmamma,' I said, putting my head in again for half a second at the drawing-room door as I passed. 'It isn't cold this morning, and I've got a long letter from Sharley to read over and over again.'
'Take care of yourself, darling,' said granny, and as I shut the door I heard her say to Kezia, 'dear child—she has such tact and thoughtfulness for her age. It is for her I am so thankful, Kezia.'
I was pleased to be praised. I have always loved praise—too much, I am afraid. But my conscience told me I had not been thoughtful for grandmamma lately, not as thoughtful as I might have been certainly. This feeling troubled me on one side, and on the other I was dying with curiosity to know what it was granny was thankful about. The mere fact of a letter having come from that 'horrid, selfish, ungrateful man,' as I still called him to myself, though I would not speak of him so to grandmamma, could not be anything to be so thankful about—at least not to be thankful for me. What could it be? What had he written to say?
I am afraid that Sharley's letter scarcely had justice done to it the second time I read it through—between every line would come up the thought of what grandmamma had said, and the wondering what she could mean. And besides that, the uncomfortable feeling that I was not as good as she thought me—that I did not deserve all the love and anxiety she lavished on me.
CHAPTER IX
A GREAT CHANGE
Perhaps here it will be best for me to tell straight off what the contents of Mr. Vandeleur's letter were. Not, I mean, to go into all as to when and how grandmamma told me about it, with 'she said's' and 'I said's.' Besides, it would not be quite correct to tell it that way, for as a matter of fact I did not understand everything then as I do now that I am several years older, and it would be difficult not to mix up what I have since come to know with the ideas I then had—ideas which were in some ways mistaken and childish.