“There Sheila, there is Ray. She will take care of you and make you feel at home.”
“To be sure I will!” cried Ray, kissing Sheila’s cold face. “Come along in and see mother and Raby. I’m so glad you have come all safe. It feels just as though it would snow. But it won’t matter if it does, now that you’re safe home.”
Sheila, a little shy and bewildered in her strange surroundings, was led into the warm drawing-room, where she was kissed by Mrs. Tom and Raby, and installed beside the fire in a comfortable chair, almost before she had time to get out a word.
Mr. Tom had come in with North and Oscar, and there was a considerable confusion of tongues, kissing and welcoming. For the moment Sheila was left in her cosy corner; and it was then that she heard a gentle voice at her elbow saying—
“You must let me add my welcome to the rest; though I am afraid it is really a sorrowful time for you. We are inclined to forget that what is our gain is your loss.”
She looked up quickly, and saw that a stranger was slipping into the seat beside her. She did not guess for a moment that he, too, was a cousin. He looked so different from all the Cossarts she had seen so far. Perhaps the startled look in her big wistful eyes showed this, for the voice continued speaking.
“I am your cousin Cyril. Probably you know our names from our father by this time. I think I can feel for you better than the rest—coming into this strange life, which is so different from anything you have known before. They had been used to it all their lives—they know nothing else. But I do, and I can understand how you must feel about it.”
“I don’t think I feel anything yet,” said Sheila slowly, “I have not had time. But Uncle Tom has been very kind. I think—I hope—I am sure I ought to be very happy.”
Yet even as she spoke Sheila felt the tears suddenly spring to her eyes. She did not know how it was; but just this arrival at a strange house, this feeling of being suddenly cast into the midst of a number of strange people seemed to bring before her her loneliness in a way she had never felt it before. She looked round for Oscar, but Ray had got him in her care, and was chattering gaily to him. Her uncle was for the moment engrossed with his wife and elder son. The wave of loneliness seemed to rise higher and higher about her. She felt the sob in her throat, and turned her face towards the fire to get rid of the welling tears before they should be seen.
“I know so well what you feel,” said Cyril’s sympathetic voice in her ear. “Often when I have come home from college, or from other people’s houses, the same feeling has come over me. If I had been a girl I should have cried too. It seemed like stepping into a new world where one had no interests, no heart, no sympathies.”