Nan made Dick take her to all their old haunts the next morning; but first of all they went to Glen Cottage. Nan ran through all the rooms with almost a child’s glee: nothing could exceed her delight when Dick showed her the drawing-room, with the new conservatory opening out of it.
“It always was a pretty room,” she said, glancing round her; “but the conservatory and the new furniture have quite transformed it. How charmed mother and the girls will be! The whole house looks better than when we were in it.”
“Nonsense!” returned Dick, stoutly. “There never was a house to compare with it. I always loved it; and so did you, Nan. What a summer we shall have here, when I am reading up for honors in the long vacation! I mean to work pretty hard; for when a fellow has such an object as that––” And then he looked at Nan meaningly; but she was not to be beguiled into that subject.
They were so happy, and so young, that they could afford to wait a little; and she did not wish Dick to speak yet of that day that was looming in the distance.
She could only be sure of one summer at Glen Cottage; but what a time they would have! She stood for a long while looking out on the lawn and calling up possible visions of summer afternoons. The tennis-ground was marked out already in her imagination; the tea-table in its old place under the trees; there was her mother knitting in her favorite wicker-chair; there were Dulce and Phillis, surrounded by their friends
“Come away, Nan. Are you moon-struck, or dreaming?” 347 questioned Dick, drawing her arm through his. “Do you remember what we have to do before luncheon? And Vigo looks so impatient for his run.” But even Dick paused for a moment in the veranda to show Nan the rose she had picked for him just there, and which still lay in his pocket-book.
All her old friends crowded round Nan to welcome her back; and great were the rejoicings when they heard that Glen Cottage was to be in the Challoners’ possession again. Carrie Paine and Adelaide Sartoris called first. Carrie embraced Nan with tearful effusion: she was an honest, warm-hearted creature. But Adelaide looked at her a little curiously.
“Oh, my dear, the scandal that has been talked about you all!” she said, in a mysterious tone. “Carrie and I would not believe it: would we, Car? We told people to hold their tongues, and not talk such nonsense.”
“Never mind that now, Addie,” returned Nan, cheerfully. She felt she must be careful of what she said, for Dick’s sake. “We have had our worries, and have worked as better people have before us; but now it is all over.”
“But is it true that your cousin, Sir Henry Challoner, has bought Gilsbank?” broke in Carrie. “Tell us about him, dear. Addie thought she saw him once. Is he a tall man, with red hair?”