Nan looked grave; but there was no hesitation in her answer:
“I am afraid it is too late to think of that now, Phil: it has to be done, and we must just go through with it.”
“You are right, Nanny darling, we must just go through with it,” agreed Phillis; and then they went on with their unfinished breakfast, and after that the business of the day began. 79
It was late in the evening when they reached home. Dulce who was at the gate looking out for them, nearly smothered them with kisses.
“Oh, you dear things! how glad I am to get you back,” she said, holding them both. “Have you really only been away since yesterday morning? It seems a week at least.”
“You ridiculous child! as though we believe that! But how is mother?”
“Oh, pretty well: but she will be better now you are back. Do you know,” eying them both very gravely, “I think it was a wise thing of you to go away like that? it has shown me that mother and I could not do without you at all: we should have pined away in those lodgings; it has quite reconciled me to the plan,” finished Dulce, in a loud whisper that reached her mother’s ears.
“What plan? What are you talking about, Dulce? and why do you keep your sisters standing in the hall?” asked Mrs. Challoner, a little irritably. But her brief nervousness vanished at the sight of their faces: she wanted nothing more, she told herself, but to see them round her, and hear their voices.
She grew quite cheerful when Phillis told her about the new papers, and how Mrs. Crump was to clean down the cottage, and how Crump had promised to mow the grass and paint the greenhouse, and Jack and Bobbie were to weed the garden-paths.
“It is a perfect wilderness now, mother: you never saw such a place.”