'And that was to be decided by testing, if it did her no harm to come out to-day,' she said. 'You should have waited till to-morrow, Hildegarde.'
The little girl looked rather penitent, but Leonore soon reassured her—
'Of course it won't get worse,' she said, 'I haven't the least, tiniest bit of a scrap of sore throat now; the only thing is,' she went on, 'that it doesn't seem as if any snowstorms were coming,' and she looked up doubtfully into her governess's face.
'But why should you want snowstorms?' asked Fraulein, 'one can be very happy at Christmas time, even if the weather is mild and the fields still green.'
'Oh,' said Leonore, a little confused, for she did not want to take away the pleasure of the 'surprise,' 'it was only that I thought——' and she hesitated.
Hildegarde came to the rescue.
'Oh,' she said, 'it was only that grandmamma had already mentioned something to us about your perhaps coming to stay at the Castle for Christmas, if the weather got very bad; and there was something about Aunt Anna's house needing repair. But all that doesn't matter now in the least. It is fixed, quite fixed, do you hear, Leonore?—that you are all coming next Monday, whether it snows, or hails, or thunders, or whatever it does.'
So far as the present was concerned, there was not much sign of any great weather disturbance, for the day was mild and bright, and Leonore was by no means the worse, but decidedly the better, for her little expedition. Both children, as children always do, whenever there is any pleasure in prospect, thought that the days would never pass till 'next Monday.' But pass they did, and it would have been difficult to find two happier little maidens than Hildegarde and her guest, when the rather lumbering old carriage, which had been sent to fetch the three visitors, drew up in front of the Castle door.
'Come, come, quick,' were Hildegarde's first words to Leonore, 'I am in such a hurry to take you to our room,' and scarcely allowing her little friend time to receive the greetings of the Baron and Baroness, and their two younger sons, Hildegarde's uncles, who had arrived the night before to spend Christmas at home, she seized her little friend's hand, and hurried her off to a part of the Castle, which Leonore had not yet seen.
'Leonore,' she said, stopping to take breath, for though the steps of the staircase which they were mounting were shallow, she had raced up them at a tremendous rate. 'Leonore, it is as I thought, we are to have the blue-silk room.'