She was not looking at people: she was far too busily engaged identifying each well-remembered spot.
There was the shabby little cottage, where she and her mother had once stayed after an illness of Mrs. Challoner’s. What odd little rooms they had occupied, looking over a strip of garden-ground full of marigolds! “Marigolds-all-in-a-row Cottage,” she had named it in her home letters. It was nearly opposite the White House where Mrs. Cheyne lived. Nan remembered her,—a handsome, sad-looking woman, who always wore black, and drove out in such handsome carriages.
“Always alone; how sad!” Nan thought; and she wondered, as they walked past the low stone walls with grassy mounds slopping from them, and a belt of shrubbery shutting out views of the house, whether Mrs. Cheyne lived there still.
They had reached a quiet country corner now; there was a clump of trees, guarded by posts and chains; a white house stood far back. There were two or three other houses, and a cottage dotted down here and there. The road looked shady and inviting. Nan began to look about her more cheerfully.
“I am glad it is so quiet, and so far away from the town, and that our neighbors will not be able to overlook us.”
“I was just thinking of that as a disadvantage,” returned Phillis, with placid opposition. “It is a pity, under the circumstances, that we are not nearer the town.” And after that Nan held her peace.
They were passing an old-fashioned house with a green door in the wall, when it suddenly opened, and a tall, grave looking young man, in clerical attire, came out quickly upon them, and then drew back to let them pass.
“I suppose that is the new vicar?” whispered Phillis, when they had gone a few steps. “You know poor old Dr. Musgrave is dead, and most likely that is his successor.”
“I forgot that was the vicarage,” returned Nan. But happily she did not turn round to look at it again; if she had done so, she would have seen the young clergyman still standing by the green door watching them. “It is a shabby, dull old house in front; but I remember that when mother and I returned Mrs. Musgrave’s call we were shown into such a dear old-fashioned drawing-room, with windows looking out on such a pleasant garden. I quite fell in love with it.”
“Well, we shall be near neighbors,” observed Phillis, somewhat shortly, as she paused before another green door, set in a long blank wall; “for here we are at the Friary, and I had better just run over the way and get the key from Mrs. Crump.”