I myself, though feeling tired and disinclined to talk, was really happier than I had been for a very long time. There was a delightful sensation of being safe and at home, even though the kind people who had taken me in, like a poor little stray bird, were strangers. The very look of the old-fashioned room and the comfortable great big four-post bed made me hug myself when I thought how different it all was from the bare cold room at Green Bank, where there had never once been a fire all the weeks I was there. It reminded me of something—what was it? Oh yes, in a minute or two I remembered. It was the room I had once slept in with mamma at grandmamma's house in London, several years before, when I was quite a little girl. For dear grandmamma had died soon after we came to live at Great Mexington. But there was the same comfortable old-fashioned feeling: red curtains to the window and the bed, and a big fire and the shiny dark mahogany furniture. Oh yes, how well I remembered it, and how enormous the bed seemed, and how mamma tucked me in at night and left the door a little open in case I should feel lonely before she came to bed. It all came back to me so that I forgot where I was for the moment, till I felt a little tug given to the hand that Myra was still holding, and heard her voice say very softly,
"Are you going to sleep, Geraldine?"
This brought me back to the present.
"Oh no," I said, "I'm not sleepy. I was only thinking," and I told her what had come into my mind.
She listened with great interest.
"How unhappy you must have been when your mamma went away," she said. "I can't remember my own mamma, but mother"—she meant her stepmother—"is so kind, and granny is so sweet. I've never been lonely."
"You can't fancy what it's like," I said. "It wasn't only mamma's going away; I know Haddie—that's my brother—loves her as much as I do, but he's not very unhappy, because he likes his school. Oh, Myra, what shall I do when I have to go back to school? I'd rather be ill always. Do you think I'll have to go back to-morrow?"
Myra looked most sympathising and concerned.
"I don't think you'll be quite well to-morrow," was the best comfort she could give me. "When I have bad colds and sore throats they always last longer than one day."