“You travel th—,” Miss Norreys was beginning, when Winifred interrupted her.
“I am quite pleased to go second,” she said eagerly. “I—I thought you would like it better, and I arranged for it.”
“Poor girl!” thought Hertha. “No doubt she has been saving in something else, to make up for the extra expense, which, doubtless, is for my sake. She has some very nice instincts about her, but I wish she could believe I don’t mind going third. Still it might hurt her to urge the point.”
They found a comfortable compartment, not unpleasantly crowded, which at that season was rather exceptional good luck, and, thanks partly to the presence of strangers, partly to Winifred’s respect for her friend’s remark, that she found few things more tiring than much talking in the railway, the journey was for the most part performed in silence.
As they approached its end, they found themselves at last alone, and Hertha, who had been enjoying with quiet though intense appreciation the varying view from her window of fields and trees in their first exquisite tenderness of green, of primroses on the banks, and homesteads in whose nestling orchards the fruit-trees were already in blossom, turned to Winifred with a smile of glad pleasure.
“Is the country remarkably pretty and picturesque about here?” she asked, “or is it all the charm of the contrast to my London eyes? It seems to me I have never loved a spring day really before.”
“I am so glad,” said Winifred, her own face reflecting the ready sympathy which, poetical or not, her devotion to Hertha never failed in. “I am so very glad. It makes me hope that, after all, you will not find a week at home too dull and dreary. You see, we can be perfectly independent: you and I can stroll about the woods talking all day long if we like.”
“But you will want to see as much as you can of your mother and sisters, considering you are only with them for a week,” said Hertha. “And I shall like to get to know your pretty Celia a little better. Don’t trouble about me, Miss Maryon, I beg you. I shall be perfectly content. I only hope I shall give no trouble, and that none of you will—will make the very least difference with my being there.”
Winifred looked slightly perplexed.
“Any difference!” she repeated, “I don’t see what difference your being with us could make, except the pleasure of having you. You see, in a country-house there is always a good deal of coming and going—there are not the ‘told-off’ hours and days as in London. But, by-the-by,” she added suddenly, “I did not see your maid at the station. Have you not brought her?”