'Very well, dear,' her aunt replied. 'Martha will get your bath ready. Can you manage with the things you have till your trunk comes this evening?'
'Oh, yes,' said Kathleen. 'My frock did not get wet at all. It's only rather crushed. And I brought my house shoes in my hand-bag. Philippa made me; she said it was such a good plan.'
'She must be a very sensible little girl,' said Miss Clotilda.
'She's a dear little girl every way,' said Kathie. 'I'm sure you'd like her dreadfully, aunty.'
She was feeling very cordial to Philippa this morning, thinking how much the little girl had tried to influence her to come to Ty-gwyn.
'But for her,' thought Kathleen, 'I'm not at all sure that I would have come. I was so sure I shouldn't like Aunt Clotilda.'
As soon as she was dressed she ran off in search of Neville, who was 'somewhere about,' old Martha told her. She found him in the garden, and together they began their explorings. By daylight the White House was far from the desolate-looking place they had fancied it the night before. It was a long house, built half-way up a gentle slope, and the entrance was, so to speak, at the back. You did not see anything of the pretty view on which looked out the principal rooms till you had crossed the large, dark-wainscoted hall, and made your way down the long corridor from whence opened the drawing-room, and library and dining-room, all large and pleasant rooms, with old-fashioned furniture, and everywhere the same faint scent, which Kathleen had noticed more strongly up-stairs, of lavender and dried rose-leaves. This part of the house was more modern than the hall and kitchens, and two other rooms, in the very old days the 'parlours,' no doubt—now called the study and the office. For the house had been added to by a Mr. Wynne, the late owner's father, a grand-uncle to David and Clotilda Powys.
'Then the old part is very old indeed, I suppose?' said Neville to his aunt, who by this time had joined them.
'Very old indeed,' she said. 'And up-stairs it seems very rambling, for there are good rooms built over the pantry and dairy and the other offices, all of which are very large. I had it all planned in my head,' she went on, 'and even Mrs. Wynne herself used often to talk of what rooms would suit you all best when it came to be your father's. Up this little stair'—for by this time they were on the first floor again—'there are two rooms which would have made such nice nurseries for little Vida, and the "office," as we call it, could easily have been turned into a very pleasant schoolroom.'