"We'd better just call her Regina," Tib said. "She said it was her name."
"Well, I dare say Regina will tell us what she thinks we should do. Any way, as you say, we must go to see her once to tell her about it. I wonder what the bell was that rang, and made her rush off in such a hurry. That part of it was really very like a fairy story."
"If only she had left a slipper behind her, it would have been a little like Cinderella," I said; "though the deserted, quiet rooms, and that part of it, is more like the Sleeping Beauty."
"And the first day, when we were trying to get in at the door in the wall, was like one of the stories of dwarfs and gnomes in the woods, wasn't it?" said Tib. "We've really had a good many adventures at Rosebuds."
This conversation took place the morning after we had first seen Regina. We were in the schoolroom, waiting for Mr. Markham. It was a little past his usual time when he came in.
"I'm a little late, I fear," he said. "I had to go to the Rectory to settle about giving some holiday lessons to one of the boys there. It will be Whit-week holidays soon, you know."
We didn't care very much; Whit-week would make no difference to us. Indeed, Christmas itself we didn't look forward to in those days, as most children do. It brought no happy family meetings, no Christmas-trees, or merry blind-man's buff and snap-dragon to us. But we knew too little about these things in other homes to think about what we missed, and grandpapa always gave us a pound each to spend as we chose. And at Ansdell, the Christmases we happened to be there, the servants had a party, and we used to watch them from the gallery that runs round the big hall. But Whit-week we cared nothing about.
"We're not to have holidays, then, are we?" I asked.
"Oh, no; Mr. Ansdell has said nothing about it," Mr. Markham replied. "By the by, Miss Gussie, you don't know when he will be coming down again, do you?"
"No," I said. "It won't be next Saturday, and perhaps not the Saturday after."