Grandmamma was exceedingly busy. She had to write very often to Mr. Vandeleur, and he replied in a most business-like way, generally, I think, by return. It was no longer a great event for the postman to be seen turning up our path, and as well as letters he sometimes now brought parcels.
For grandmamma was determined that we should both look nice when we first went to London to live in her nephew's big house, where there were so many servants.
'We must do him credit,' she said to me, with a smile. I understood what she meant, and I had a feeling of pride about it, too, and I was very pleased to have some new dresses and hats and other things. But with me there was no good feeling to my cousin mixed up in all this. I now know that there was reason for grandmamma's wish to gratify him; he behaved most generously and thoughtfully about everything, sending her more than sufficient money for all we needed, and doing it in such a nice way—just as a son who had grown rich might take pleasure in helping a mother to whom he owed more than mere money could ever repay.
But though grandmamma read out to me bits of his letters in which he was always repeating how grateful he was to her for coming to his aid in his difficulties, she did not tell me the whole particulars of her arrangements with him. He would not have liked it, and I was really too young to have been told all these money-matters.
I did notice that there was never any mention of me in what she read to me. And now I know that Mr. Vandeleur did not particularly rejoice at the prospect of my living with them too. He had proposed that I should be sent to some very good school, for he knew nothing of children, especially of little girls. I think he believed they were even more tiresome and mischievous and bothering in every way than boys.
Grandmamma would not listen for an instant to this proposal. Her first and greatest duty in life was her granddaughter, 'Paul's little girl,' and she would do anything rather than be separated from me, especially as I was delicate and required care. In reality I was not nearly as delicate as she thought. But I daresay it did not add to my cousin's wish to have me in his house to hear that I was considered so.
Among the other things that grandmamma had to arrange about was what to do with Windy Gap. In her heart I believe she thought it very unlikely that it would ever be our home again, but she did not say anything of this kind to me. She went off one day to Mr. Timbs to ask him to try to let it as it was, with our furniture in. He promised to do his best, but did not think it likely it would let in the winter.
'And by the spring we shall be coming back again,' I said, when granny told me this. I had not gone with her to Mr. Timbs; she had made some little excuse for not taking me.
To this she did not reply, and I thought no more about it, but I was glad to hear that Kezia was to stay on in the cottage to keep it all aired and in nice order. And I said to her secretly that if granny and I were not happy in Chichester Square—that was the name of the gloomy, rather old-fashioned square, filled with handsome gloomy houses, where Mr. Vandeleur lived—it was nice to feel that we had only to drive to the station and get into the train and be 'home' again in four or five hours.
Kezia smiled, though I think in her heart she was much more inclined to cry, and said she hoped to hear of our being very happy indeed in London, though of course she would look forward to seeing us again.