If she could have given up thinking so much about what was to come, it would have been better, I daresay. But still it was not to be wondered at that she found it difficult to give her mind to anything else. The governess could not make out why Gladys had become so absent and inattentive all of a sudden, for though the little girl's head was so full of the absorbing thought, she never dreamt of speaking of it to any one but Roger. Mrs. Lacy had not told her she must not do so, but somehow Gladys, with a child's quick delicate instinct of honour, often so little understood, had taken for granted that she was not to do so.
"Everything comes to him that has patience to wait," says the Eastern proverb, and in her own way Gladys had been patient, when one morning, about a week after the day on which Susan had told her aunt that everything was settled, Miss Fern, the daily governess, at the close of lessons, told her to go down to the drawing-room, as Mrs. Lacy wanted her.
"And Roger too?" asked Gladys, her heart beating fast, though she spoke quietly.
"Yes, I suppose so," said Miss Fern, as she tied her bonnet-strings.
The children had noticed that she had come into the schoolroom a little later than usual that morning, and that her eyes were red. But in answer to Roger's tender though very frank inquiries, she had murmured something about a cold.
"That was a story, then, what she said about her eyes," thought sharp-witted Gladys. "She's been crying; I'm sure she has." But then a feeling of pity came into her mind. "Poor Miss Fern; I suppose she's sorry to go away, and I daresay Mrs. Lacy said she wasn't to say anything about it to us." So she kissed Miss Fern very nicely, and stopped the rest of the remarks which she saw Roger was preparing.
"Go and wash your hands quick, Roger," she said, "for we must go downstairs. Mine are quite clean, but your middle fingers are all over ink."
"Washing doesn't take it away," said Roger reluctantly. There were not many excuses he would have hesitated to use to avoid washing his hands!
"Never mind. It makes them clean anyway," said Gladys decidedly, and five minutes later two very spruce little pinafored figures stood tapping at the drawing-room door.
"Come in, dears," said Mrs. Lacy's faint gentle voice. She was lying on her sofa, and the children went up and kissed her.