“It is time for me to go away,” said Hope, disconsolately. “Good-bye, Mrs Buchanan; and, Helen, you need not be angry when I am just going away.”
Helen rose and accompanied her favourite to the door.
“I am not angry, Hope; but you must never speak of me again at home; mind—or I shall be very much offended.”
“Why?” said Hope, boldly.
But it was not quite so easy to answer why.
“Because I shall promise if you will tell me the reason,” said the sensible Hope.
But Helen could give no reason; so she bit her lip and looked half angry, and laughed.
“Do you know, Hope, I begin to think you are to be very clever,” she said at last.
“Miss Swinton says I am sensible,” said Hope, steadily; “and when you have no reason, why should you be angry?—but mind, you are to get your fortune out of a book; and now I must go away.”
The farewell was said, and Hope gone; but Helen still stood leaning over the garden-gate, looking after her with an embarrassed smile upon her face. It was a sunny morning, though the haze of the beginning frost was still in the air; the morning always brought new hopes and a buoyant upspringing to the elastic nature of Helen Buchanan, and she felt more than usually light-hearted to-day. As was her habit, she revealed this in every unconscious movement. Mrs Buchanan knew by the very measure of her step as she reëntered the house, that there was no mist in her sunny atmosphere—no cloud upon her sky. A certain shy pleasure hovered upon her face, prompting her to laugh at sundry times with embarrassed uncertain gladness, and swaying about the colour in her cheek, as a mist is swayed by the wind. It did not seem certainly that Hope Oswald had much offended her.