he next two or three days passed most pleasantly. The weather, as if to make up for its bad behaviour on the day of their journey, was particularly fine, and the children were out from morning till night. Old Martha thought privately to herself that it was a good thing the neighbours were so kind, for they were even 'better than their word,' in sending all sorts of good things to Ty-gwyn for the Captain's children, as Neville and Kathleen's appetites, thanks to the change of air and the sea breezes, were really rather alarming. And Miss Clotilda was so perfectly happy to see them both so bright and well, that she tried to banish all painful thoughts as much as she could.
Still they were there; and when the poor lady was alone in her room at night, it was often more than she could do to restrain her tears. For the happier the children were, the more she learned to love them, the more bitterly, as was natural, did she feel the disappointment of not being able to hope to see much more of them. But she said little or nothing of her feelings, and the children—Kathie especially—little suspected their depth. Kathie was living entirely in the present; she but rarely gave a thought to the ideas Philippa had suggested. And Neville, though less carelessly light-hearted and forgetful, was slower both of thought and speech. He could see nothing to be done, and for some time he rather shrank from coming upon the subject with his aunt.
It came to be spoken of at last, however, and this was how it happened.
One morning, about the fourth or fifth of their visit, old John Parry, with a great air of importance, as if he were doing her a special service, handed to Kathleen a rather fat letter, addressed to herself.
'You see, miss, to be sure I never make no mistakes,' he said.
For he was quite aware that Miss Clotilda still in her heart, somehow or other, associated him with the mysterious loss of Neville's letter, and he wished to keep up his dignity in the eyes of the stranger young lady.
'Oh yes, thank you,' said Kathie, not quite knowing what else to say. For in London one's personal acquaintance with the postman—or postmen, rather—is necessarily of the slightest.
'What a comical old fellow he is!' she said to herself, as she ran off. 'I daresay he did lose the letter, after all. How amused Phil would be at the people here, and the funny way they talk! Dear old Phil! I wonder what she has got to say, and what she has written such a long letter about?' For the moment she got it in her hand she recognised little Philippa's careful, childish handwriting on the envelope.
'Aren't you coming out, Kathie?' Neville called out from some mysterious depths, where he was absorbed in arranging his fishing-tackle.
'Not yet. I've got a long letter from Philippa. You'll find me in the library if you look in in a few minutes.'