The tidal train was just steaming into London Bridge station on a certain spring evening as the above words were spoken. From a window of one of the carriages a bright young face was peering eagerly, a face which lighted up with a smile of rare sweetness the moment Major Strickland's soldierly figure came into view. A tiny gloved hand was held out as a signal, the major's eye was caught, the train came to a stand, and next moment Janet Holme was on the platform with her arms round the old soldier's neck, and her lips held up for a kiss.
The publicity of this transaction seemed slightly to shock the sensibilities of Miss Close, the English teacher, in whose charge Janet had come over; but she was won to a quite different view of the affair when the major, after requesting to be introduced to her, shook her cordially by the hand, said how greatly obliged he was to her for the care she had taken of "his dear Miss Holme," and invited her to dine next day with himself and Janet. Then Miss Close went her way, and the Major and Janet went theirs in a cab, to a hotel not a hundred miles from Piccadilly.
Janet's first words as they got clear of the station were:
"And now you must tell me how everybody is at Dupley Walls."
"Everybody was quite well when I left home, except one person--Sister Agnes."
"Dear Sister Agnes!" said Janet, and the tears sprang to her eyes in a moment. "I am more sorry than I can tell to hear that she is ill."
"Not ill exactly, but ailing," said the major. "You must not alarm yourself unnecessarily. She caught a severe cold one wet evening about three months ago, as she was on her way home from visiting some poor sick woman in the village, and she seems never to have been quite well since."
"I had a letter from her five days ago, but she never hinted to me that she was not well."
"I can quite believe that. She is not one given to complain about herself, but one who strives to soothe the complaints of others. The good she does in her quiet way among the poor is something wonderful. I must tell you what an old bedridden man, to whom she had been very kind, said to her the other day. Said he, 'If everybody had their rights in this world, ma'am, or if I was king of fairyland, you should have a pair of angel's wings, so that everybody might know how good you are.' And there are a hundred others who would say the same thing."
"If I had not had her dear letters to hearten me and cheer me up, I think that many a time I should have broken down utterly under the dreadful monotony of my life at the Pension Clissot. I had no holidays, in the common meaning of the word; no dear friends to go and see; none even to come once in a way to see me, were it only for one happy hour. I had no home recollections to which I could look back fondly in memory, and the future was all a blank--a mystery. But the letters of Sister Agnes spoke to me like the voice of a dear friend. They purified me, they lifted me out of my common work-a-day troubles, and all the petty meannesses of school-girl existence, and set before me the example of a good and noble life as the one thing worth striving for in this weary world."