Meanwhile the American girl was hurrying on in the wintry twilight down the High Street of the quaint old town, where the lamps were just beginning to be lighted, and where many people, hastening homeward with that expectant look that seems to mean a cheerful fireside and cozy supper, made the young girl think sadly of her own desolation. Nora Mayne had a stout little heart: she was accustomed to trying to feel brave, to forcing herself to think cheerfully both of the present and the future, but I am afraid that just then it seemed rather hard work. She and her mother were almost at the end of their resources, friendless and alone in a strange English town.
As she went along, slackening her pace a little as she passed the dear old Abbey Church, Nora thought over the last year, deciding in her own mind that it had been a great mistake to try their fortunes in England. Just a year before, Mr. Mayne's death left his widow and child with a few hundred dollars, and almost no friends, in a Connecticut village. Mr. Mayne had been a visionary man. Nora remembered brief periods of luxury, followed by want and loneliness. Her life had been a wandering one, for Mr. Mayne rarely staid long in any one place; and the girl was early accustomed to leading a lonely life among her books, not caring to make friends she might leave on the morrow. At her father's death Nora and her mother had come to England, hoping to find employment among some of the widow's early friends. Mrs. Mayne's girlhood had been spent in England—a bright, luxurious period, of which Nora never tired of hearing; but death, and the long silence of years, had scattered all traces of that happy past. The associations of twenty years before seemed to have vanished as though the whole story had been a dream. Months passed in London and in the little town of Nunsford, which Mrs. Mayne remembered in that happy "long ago," and now mother and daughter were living from week to week, no longer hopeful, only waiting for some chance to take them home again. Meanwhile illness had been added to their trials; Nora had the new misery of seeing her mother suffer while she vainly searched for some employment. Day after day she returned to their humble lodging tired and disappointed; yet even on this evening, feeling it so difficult to face the future with any hope, there lurked somewhere in the dim corner of her heart a confidence in "to-morrow."
Nora only allowed herself to linger a moment by the old church. It was her favorite haunt; the gray walls, the bit of cloister, the solemn pathway with its tombs and archway of leafless trees—how she loved it all! It was so like the pictures she had seen of England—so peaceful, when her heart was full of anxieties, so bright on the winter mornings, with sunshine among the fir-trees and the ivied door outside, and a flood of light from the old stained-glass windows within! Nora had learned to know every nook and corner near the old abbey; and how great was her delight the day she found a short-cut from the High Street, past the grayest wall, the end of the grammar school with its quaint bit of thatched roof, and around by the beautiful brick-walled Deanery garden.
That Deanery garden was another source of comfort to little Nora. She fancied all manner of stories connected with it. She knew that once the house had been a monastery, and, later, a famous manor, and now it looked as if it might contain any romance, however picturesque or poetic.
It was a beautiful old house, with many turrets and gabled ends. It stood in the midst of a garden that even in winter-time seemed to have a bloom of its own. There are many winter flowers in Devonshire. These colored the Deanery garden faintly, and filled the girl's heart with pleasure as she caught glimpses of them on her lonely walks. Sometimes the garden gate stood open; often in passing, Nora saw the Dean's daughters with their governess going in or out. Once as she stood in the morning sunshine that fell warmly on the brick wall, Nora had seen an invalid lady carried out to a Bath-chair, followed by a tall servant in livery and a pretty, slim young girl. The lady had a beautiful face framed in white hair; she flashed a look on Nora in her shabby gown standing in the cruel sunlight—a wistful, pathetic little figure, with something worth remembering in her eager eyes. The young lady at her side was drawing on a long glove, and Nora saw the sparkle of her pretty rings. In spite of the lady's wan face, it all suggested comfort, and prosperity,' sunshine, warmth; the green things of life seemed to little Nora to be shut in, and to come out of that quaint old garden. She stood still, fancying herself unseen, as the lady was placed in the Bath-chair, her young companion arranging her fur wraps comfortably.
"Thanks, dear," the lady said, in a sweet low voice. Then she glanced back at some one within the Deanery garden. "Penelope is with me," she said, smiling.
"That is her name, then," thought the little watcher, sighing, as the Bath-chair was wheeled away. "And what a lovely face! what a sweet way she had with the poor lady! Oh, but it is easy to take care of sick people who have plenty of money!" cried the poor child to herself, thinking of her mother in need at home.
But Nora never saw "Penelope" again. She watched often, wondering if the pretty young figure would not appear in the garden or out of the old wall door. Gradually she began to think of her as a "story-book" girl—some one to build up a romance about, while her own life was dragging on with such bitter anxieties.
Nora's destination was not very far from the Deanery. It was an old-fashioned Berlin wool shop, the upper floors of which were let in lodgings. She passed the shop window quickly, and entering by a side door, hurried up the old oak staircases to a room on the top floor. A fire was burning low, faintly illuminating the dreary room, with its stiff furniture and inartistic decoration. Mrs. Mayne was pillowed in an easy-chair before the fire.
"Here I am, mamma," said Nora, cheerfully; "and now you shall have a good cup of tea."