“Oh, Jerry,” she said, “you make me feel quite creepy. I shouldn’t like to hear the wind like that at night. I certainly don’t envy the girl if there is a haunted room and she has to sleep anywhere near it.”
“There now—you have found out one thing you don’t envy her for,” said Jerry, triumphantly. “But the door’s opening, Charlotte. There’s papa.”
Papa it was, accompanied to the steps by the amiable Mr Bright, who seemed really distressed at not having been allowed to make himself of any use. For Mr Waldron cut him short in the middle of some elaborate sentences by a civil but rather abrupt “Thank you—exactly so. Good evening,” and in another moment he was up in his place, and had taken the reins from Jerry’s hands.
“You’re not cold, I hope,” he said. “Dolly all right, eh? Well, Gipsy”—his pet name for Charlotte—“you’ve had enough of Silverthorns by moonlight, I suppose?”
Charlotte gave a little sigh.
“It was very nice,” she said. “I wish it were ours, papa.”
“My dear child,” he exclaimed in surprise.
“I do, papa. I think it would be delightful to be as rich as—as that. I just don’t believe people who pretend that being rich and having lovely houses and things like that is all no good.”
Mr Waldron hesitated. He understood her, though she expressed herself so incoherently.
“My dear child,” he said again, “if it were not natural to wish for such things, there would be no credit in being contented without them. Only remember that they are not the best things. And if it is any comfort to you, take my word for it that the actual having them gives less than you would believe, when you picture it in all the glow of your imagination.”