Waveney took a cab when she reached Dereham. The driver touched his hat when she told him to drive to the Red House, Erpingham.
"I know it," he said, as he took off his horse's nose-bag. "There ain't a cab-driver in Dereham that don't know the ladies at the Red House; they give us a supper in Christmas week, and there is another for the costers that use their donkeys well—and it is a rare spread, too;" and then he smacked his lips and jumped on the box.
Waveney looked out and tried to interest herself in the various objects they passed; but her head felt heavy as lead. The common looked lovely in the afternoon sunshine, and, as before, the children were dancing in and out the trees. Some little boys were sailing a boat on the pond, and a Newfoundland was swimming across it with a stick in his mouth. Some riders were cantering over the grass. Every one seemed gay and animated and full of life; dogs barked, children laughed, and the cawing of rooks filled the air.
As they drove in at the lodge gates the two little Yorkshire terriers ran out barking, and the elderly maid Mitchell came to the door.
"My mistresses are out, ma'am," she said, pleasantly, "but Nurse Marks has orders to make you comfortable. Will you please to go in, and I will see to the box and pay the cabman. No, ma'am," as Waveney timidly offered her some money. "Miss Harford always pays the cabmen herself."
"Aye, and pays them well, too," observed the driver, with a complacent grin. "No arguing with a poor chap who has to work hard for his living about an extra sixpence."
Waveney felt very strange and forlorn as she stepped into the hall, with Fuss and Fury barking excitedly round her, and then she saw a little old woman with a very long nose, and hair as white as snow bundling down the wide staircase to meet her; for no other word could describe Nurse Marks's rolling and peculiar gait.
"She is the most wonderful little old woman I have ever seen," wrote Waveney, in her first letter home. "If you were to dress her in a red cloak and peaked hat she would make an excellent Mother Hubbard, or the 'old woman who lived in her shoe,' or that ambitious old person who tried to brush the cobwebs from the sky. To see her poking that long nose of hers into corners is quite killing. She has bright eyes like a dormouse, and a cosy voice—do you know what I mean by that?—and she wears the funniest cap, with a black bow at the top. But there! you must see her for yourself."
"My ladies are out, dearie," she began at once, rather breathlessly. "Miss Doreen is at the Home, and Mrs. Mainwaring has sent for Miss Althea unexpectedly, to go to some grand At Home; but she will be back to dinner, and she begged that you would excuse her absence, and I am going to take you to my room and give you some tea; for you are tired, dearie, I know;" and then Nurse Marks led the way upstairs, and Waveney followed, feeling as though she were the heroine of a fairy-story and that some benevolent fairy had her in tow.
"My ladies always calls this the Cubby-house," observed Nurse Marks, in a proud tone, "and to my thinking it is the nicest room in the house, though it is odd-shaped, as Mitchell says, and a trifle low."