"I can't help thinking Letitia will regret it," said the gentleman, who was Miss Rolf's father.
"Why should she, papa?" said the boy, quickly. "Surely it is only fair. Her father was left out of Cousin Harris's will just for a mere caprice, and why should Cousin Letty have everything, and this child nothing? I don't see the justice of that."
"But to remove her from a low condition; to place her among people she never knew—I am afraid it is unwise," said Mr. Rolf, shaking his head. "You don't understand it, Lance; I don't expect you to. Just wait, and see my words come true."
Lance, or Lancelot Rolf, laughed brightly. He seemed quite prepared to take the risks on Miss Letitia Rolf's venture. While Miss Rolf wrote her letter to little Nan, the boy watched her earnestly. He was intensely interested in this new-found cousin, and, had he known where to go, would certainly have paid a visit to the cheese-monger's family himself.
"NAN WAS DRESSED BY MRS. RUPERT AND MARIAN."
He would have found an excited little party had he done so, for by eight o'clock Mrs. Rupert had indulged in every possible speculation about Nan's future. Mr. Rupert, a tall, thin, weather-beaten man, had come in for tea, and was told of the visitor, and obliged to hear all Mrs. Rupert's ideas and hopes on the subject, while Nan herself was the only quiet member of the party. She sat at the tea-table, for once in her life very quiet and repressed. Just what she hoped or thought she could not have told you; but it seemed to her as if something like her old life with her parents might be coming back. Could it be she was to go away, and leave Bromfield, the cheeses and butter and eggs, her aunt's loud voice, Marian's little airs of superiority, and Phil's rough kindness, forever behind her?
"Come, Nan, you may as well help with the tea-things, if you are going to see your rich relations," said her aunt's voice, sharply recalling her to her duties, and Marian laughed scornfully.
"I don't suppose we'll know Nan, or she us, by to-morrow night," she said, with a shrug of the shoulders.
Early the next morning a man-servant from Mrs. Grange's brought a note for Nan, which she read in the little untidy parlor, surrounded by all the family. It was from Miss Rolf, requesting Nan to come as soon as possible to Mrs. Grange's house, and it produced a new flutter in the household. Nan was dressed by Mrs. Rupert and Marian in everything that either of the girls' scanty wardrobe possessed worth putting on for such a visit. Had she but known it, a much simpler toilet would have been far more appropriate and becoming, for her purple merino dress and Marian's red silk neck-tie, her "best" hat with its green feathers, and Mrs. Rupert's soiled lavender kid gloves, were a very dreadful combination. Nan, as she walked up Main Street, did not feel entirely satisfied with the costume herself. If her head had not been so dazed by what the Ruperts already called her "good fortune," she would have felt it all more keenly. As it was, she went into Mrs. Grange's gateway feeling herself in a dream, and wondering how and where she would wake up.