"Want me to bring out a pound of those scrumptious soft chocolates from Mailliards? Then we can have a regular festival on 'em to-night, if you're a good girl while I'm gone."
When Charlotte had taken her departure, Nancy, who had walked over to the station with her, struck out through the village for a good walk before luncheon. The country beyond Broadmore was picturesque, and Nancy loved nothing better than to swing along without plan or purpose, cutting across a field here, or turning into a bit of glowing woodland there, as her fancy prompted. In her short full skirt, her small feet laced into sturdy low-heeled boots, she could negotiate fences and brooks with the freedom of a boy, revelling in a feeling of adventurousness and liberty. The sun had melted the frost of the early morning, the ground was soft, and the air mild though bracing. In the wide puddles which had gathered in the depressions of the country roads, a sky mottled with huge, lazy clouds was reflected. A cock crowed on some distant haystack. Now and then a mischievous wind rose, bending the long brown grass as it swept along, and making Nancy catch her breath in a sort of jubilant excitement, as it blew into her face, and spun out wisps of her hair behind her.
She had turned after about two miles of walking, and was approaching the pike on the school side of the railroad station, when she heard behind her the patient creaking of the old hack, and the familiar clucking of the driver to his lean and melancholy steed. As it came beside her, she glanced up curiously; then her eyes grew round, and she stared in incredulous amazement. For, bolt upright on the decrepit back seat, his head erect under its wide-brimmed black felt hat, his thin hands folded on the crook of his cane, sat—her Uncle Thomas. She lacked breath to speak to him; but just then he turned his eyes and saw her. For a moment he merely gazed at her without a glimmer of recognition and she had half persuaded herself that his brief visit to the cottage had not been long enough to have fixed her features in his mind, when his face suddenly broke into an almost boyish smile.
"Hey, driver—stop! Whoa! Why, my dear child—bless me, this is very fortunate!" With one foot on the step, he leaned out and clasped her hand. "Get in, get in, my dear—I was on my way to see you. And I nearly missed you, eh?" Nancy clambered up beside him, and the driver, not receiving any orders to the contrary, clucked to his steed, which continued on its interrupted way.
"Were you really going to visit us, Uncle?" asked Nancy. "It's a pity that Alma isn't here. She went in to the city—and it was just luck that I didn't go, too." She smiled to herself, wondering if, after all, Providence had had some hand in the events of the morning which had kept her where she was.
"Luck? Well, I should say so. I'd have been badly disappointed if my surprise had fallen through," chuckled Uncle Thomas, who was evidently in the best of spirits. "Well, well—you're as ruddy as a ripe pomegranate, my dear."
"I've just walked four miles," said Nancy.
"Walked? By yourself? Now, that's a taste you've inherited from me. Fond of walking, aren't you? Now, tell me how you are getting along—at school, I mean. Like it, eh?" He looked at her keenly, a twinkle hiding just under the surface of his gray eyes.
"Yes, I like it. I'm working awfully hard—I have to, or I wouldn't get anywhere, because it would be awfully easy to loaf at Miss Leland's," laughed Nancy; she had a feeling that he was waiting to get her opinion of the school, and she was afraid of sounding priggish, or as if she were trying to impress him with an idea of her industry. So she chatted away about the girls, telling him about Charlotte particularly, describing the teachers, giving him an account of the routine, and so on, to all of which he listened as intently as if he were her father.
"So you're swimming along. Good. And how is my other niece? Is she working very hard? Has she made lots of friends, eh?" Again Nancy felt that he was pumping her, but she told him casually about Alma, taking care to say nothing that might sound as if she said it for effect, and he listened, nodding his head, and smiling.