“Would you mind if I didn’t?” said Betty; “for once I’ve got some sewing that I’m rather in a hurry about, but I will come to meet you—you won’t be very long?”
“As quick as possible, you may be sure,” replied Frances. “But, any way,” she added, with a smile, “if possibly we are later than I mean to be, we won’t expect to see you, Betty, as I know you’ve no love for being out alone when it’s getting dark.”
So they set off, and Betty, exhilarated a little by the work she hoped to finish in their absence, which had to do with her Christmas presents for her sisters, spent the first part of the afternoon cheerily enough, though by herself.
“I do feel brighter to-day somehow,” she thought, “and, after all, it’s terribly pagan not to cheer up at Christmas-time. Then, too, though it’s such a platitude, things are never so bad but they might be worse. Supposing Francie’s cold had turned into bronchitis, or something dreadful like that, and she had been very, very ill, how miserable we might have been just now! What would Eira and I do without her? Even if she married, how dreadfully dull it would be—but no, it wouldn’t, she would have a charming home of her own, and we would go and stay with her and—oh, yes! it would change everything. But I must remember I had made up my mind to give up building castles in the air!”
By four o’clock she was ready to go out to meet her sisters, her work completed and laid safely away. It was dusk, almost more than dusk, when she opened the gate and passed out into the road. But a little further on it grew lighter again, as here the trees were less thickly planted. Betty went into the park through the usual entrance, and, crossing through the shrubbery quickly, stood for a moment on a little knoll which commanded a view of the open drive from the lodge, by which her sisters would make their way.
It was light enough still to have perceived them, had they been within the park walls; but they were not to be seen.
“I don’t care to go all the way to the gates,” she said to herself. “I’m not in the humour for gossiping with the old Webbs. I’ll just walk up and down about here till I see them, or till I hear the gates clang. It is so very, very still to-day, and the ground feels harder, as if frost were coming; I could almost hear their steps before I saw them.”
But, though clear and still, it was not a bright evening. Walking up and down soon palls, and Betty stood still, half hesitating as to whether she should change her mind and go farther to meet the others.
Suddenly—most things were sudden with Betty—an idea struck her.
“I have a great mind,” she thought, “to run up to the church end of the Laurel Walk, and peep along it, just to see if possibly—oh! of course there could be nothing to see, or even to hear; but it would be rather fun to be able to tell Eira that I had done it. She couldn’t but think it brave of me, and I can certainly be back in time to meet them, before they’re half across.”