“I say,” he cried, looking up from his old position upon the great white rug, “Lucy, it is not any good to think.”
Lucy was not greatly given to that exercise of thinking, and, to tell the truth, she had not found it to be of very much use.
“What makes you say so, Jock?”
“Oh, because I have tried—often,” said the little fellow; “before we went away from here, and after, when I went to school. It’s no good, you never find out anything; you wonder and wonder, but you never know any better. Do you think now,” said Jock, with a gleam of moisture in his eyes, “that he ever sees us now, or hears what we are talking about? I wonder—often—”
“I—hope so, Jock,” said Lucy; but as she remembered what she had just been thinking she faltered a little, and was not so sure that this was desirable, as in the abstract it seemed to be.
“I wonder,” said the little boy—thoughts such as had filled her mind had perhaps been vaguely floating across his firmament also. “I wonder—if he would miss his funny old table and his big blue paper if he were to come back now.”
“He has now something better; we will not think of that any longer,” said Lucy, drying her wet eyes.
“But we have got to think of it,” said Jock, reflectively contradicting himself; “that is funny, everything is funny. There is Aunty Ford at the foot of the stairs calling us to go down to tea.”
CHAPTER XXX.
HOME AND FRIENDS.
That very evening, notwithstanding her supposed fatigue, the little world of Farafield was roused to welcome Lucy. The rector and his wife, going out for a drive in the cool of the evening, drew up their pony at the door, and left a card and their kind regards, and hoped Miss Trevor was not tired with her journey; and a little later, when Lucy and Jock were preparing to stroll out as they had been in the habit of doing, upon the common, they were stopped by a visit from Mrs. Rushton and her son and daughter. “We always come out after dinner in the hot weather,” the visitor explained, “and it is so delightful to have an object for our walk. I hope you have had a good rest, my dear. What a pleasure,” said Mrs. Rushton, taking Lucy’s hands in hers, and looking at her with enthusiasm, “to see you at home again and looking so well!”