Then I overheard a little bustle in the kitchen, and by the sounds, I made out that Harry or Lindsay, or both of them perhaps, were helping Kezia in her preparations.
'What nice boys they are,' I thought to myself, and a feeling of shame began to come over me that I should have first got to know them when acting in a way that they, Harry at least, so evidently thought wrong and foolish.
But now that, in spite of her disapproval, I felt myself safe in Kezia's care, the restraint I had put upon myself gave way more and more. I sat there crying quietly, and when the little tray with tea and a tempting piece of hot toast (which Harry's red face showed he had had to do with) made its appearance I ate and drank obediently, almost without speaking.
Half an hour later I was in bed in my own little room, Kezia tucking me in as she had done so very, very often in my life.
'Now go to sleep, dearie,' she said, 'and think of nothing till to-morrow morning, except that when things come to the worst they begin to get better.'
And sleep I did, soundly and long. Harry and Lindsay had had their breakfast two hours before at least, when I woke, and other things had happened. A telegram had come in reply to Harry's, thanking him for it, announcing Mr. Vandeleur's arrival that very afternoon, and desiring Harry to meet him at Middlemoor Station.
They did not tell me of this; perhaps they were afraid it would have made me run off again somewhere else. But when my old nurse brought up my breakfast we had a long, long talk together. I told her all that I had told Harry the night before, and of course in some ways it was easier for her to understand than it had been for him. I could not have had a better counsellor. She just put aside all I said about grandmamma's not caring for me any longer as simple nonsense; she didn't attempt to explain all the causes of my having been left so much to myself. She didn't pretend to understand it altogether.
'Your grandmamma will put it all right to you, herself, when she sees well to do so,' she said. 'She has just made one mistake, Miss Helena, it seems to me—she has credited you with more sense than perhaps should be expected of a child.'
I didn't like this, and I felt my cheeks grow red.
'More sense,' repeated Kezia, 'and she has trusted you too much. It should have pleased you to be looked on like that, and if you'd been a little older it would have done so. The idea that you could think she had left off caring for you would have seemed to her simply impossible. She has trusted you too much, and you, Miss Helena, have not trusted her at all.'