“Bless you, child! Don’t you know, and you go to school every day?”
I stood up; my hands were warm, and my feet were tingling with renewed life. I had a curious sensation that my nose, which was by no means my best feature, was very red, for it certainly felt hot. I turned round and said, “I am quite warm now.”
“Then you would like to go up to your room. Nancy will go with you. She’ll unpack your parcel for you.”
“Oh no, thank you,” I replied. Then I added, “Is Nancy one of your servants?”
“I have only one servant in this tiny house, my dear, and Nancy is the one. She is a very good-natured sort of girl, and quite pleased at the idea of your coming to stay with me. I treat her as a sort of friend, you see, as she and I are all alone in the house together.”
I began to like Miss Donnithorne better and better each moment. She was so jolly. Whenever she spoke her eyes sparkled as though they were laughing, while the rest of her face was grave. All the same, I did not want Nancy, and I said so.
“I can help myself,” I argued. “We have only got Hannah in our big house.”
“Well, well, dear! if you can manage for yourself, I am the last one to wish you to do otherwise,” said Miss Donnithorne. “Here is your parcel; you can take it upstairs.”
“But how am I to find my way to my room?”
“You cannot lose it, my dear. Go up that little staircase, and when you reach the landing you will see an open door. Go through that doorway and you will be in your own bedroom. There’s no other bedroom on that landing, so you cannot miss it, can you?”
“No,” I replied, laughing.
I seized my brown-paper parcel and ran upstairs. It certainly was nice in the country, and how delicious a small house was! One could be warm in a small house; it was impossible to be warm in that great, rambling, old-fashioned house which belonged to the college and where father and the boys and I lived.
I found my bedroom. Now, girls who are accustomed to nice bedrooms all their lives take, I suppose, no particular interest in another nice bedroom when they are suddenly introduced into it. But my room at home could never, under any pretext, be considered nice. For some extraordinary reason, big as the house was, I had always slept next to Hannah in one of the attics. There was no earthly reason for this, except perhaps that when I was a child I was nearer to Hannah in case I should turn ill. It had never occurred to me to change my room, and it had certainly never occurred to anybody else to make it comfortable. There was a bedstead and a bed of a sort, and there was a looking-glass, with a crack right down the middle, which stood on a little deal table. The deal table was, as a rule, covered with a cloth, which seldom looked white on account of the London fogs. There was a huge wooden press – it could certainly not be called by the modern name of wardrobe – in which I kept my clothes; and there was a wooden chair on which I placed my candle at night, and that was about all. One side of the room had a sloping roof, and the window was at the best of times of minute proportions. But the room itself had a vast amount of unoccupied space; it was a huge room, and terribly ugly.
Never had I realised that fact until I went into the sweet little apartment which Miss Grace Donnithorne had ordered to be got ready for me. In the first place, its window looked out on a pure expanse of snow-covered country, and I jumped softly up and down as I gazed at that view, for the sun was shining on it, and the sky overhead was blue – blue as sapphires. Then in the grate there was a fire – a fire just as bright as the one in the little sitting-room with the stuffed birds downstairs; and all the hangings of the room were of white dimity, which had evidently been put up fresh from the wash. It was by no means a grand room; it was simple of the simple, but it did look sweet. There was a little nosegay of chrysanthemums on the dressing-table; there were dainty hangings round my snow-white couch; and on the floor was an old-fashioned carpet made of different shades of crimson, and very thick and soft it felt to the feet. The china in the room was very pretty, being white with scarlet berries on it; it all looked Christmasy and wintry and yet cheery, like the sort of Christmases one reads of in the fairy-tales of long ago.
I unfastened my parcel. I had just taken my long brown skirt out of its wrappings, and was shaking it out preparatory to putting it on, when I heard Miss Grace say from the bottom of the stairs, “Dumps, how long will it be before you are downstairs? I am just having the cutlets dished up.”
“Oh dear!” I said to myself. – “I’ll be down in a very few minutes,” I answered.
Now, I had promised father that I would certainly go down in the brown skirt and red blouse, and I would not break that promise to him for the world; so I quickly divested myself of my shabby little travelling costume and got into the brown skirt. It was a little tight in the waist, for I must say mine was very broad, but in every other single particular it was too big for me; it was so long in front that I could scarcely walk without stumbling. Still, I had no doubt that I made a very imposing figure in it. It was thick, it felt warm, and I remembered my father’s remark that there would be room for growth, and that the thinning process would eventually make it not quite so heavy.
But the brown skirt, although a partial success, was nothing at all to the red blouse. I have said that it was a brick-red, and it did not suit my face. It was of common material, made with thick folds, and the sleeves were much too long. I got into it somehow, and cast a glance at myself in the glass. How funny I looked! – my head not too tidy; my face flushed, in by no means a becoming way; with a brick-red blouse and a brown skirt. Nevertheless, I was dressed, and there was a sort of satisfaction in feeling grown-up just for once. I wished that I had had time to plait my hair and pin it round my head; then I might have impressed Miss Grace Donnithorne with the fact that not a child but a grown-up young lady had come to visit her. But as there was no time for that, and as there was a most appetising smell coming up the narrow stairs, I flew down just as I was, in my new costume. I very nearly stumbled as I ran downstairs, but I saved myself by picking up my skirt, and then I entered the little drawing-room.
“Come, come, child!” said Miss Donnithorne. “Not that way; come into this room now.”
I turned and crossed the little hall and entered the dining-room. The dining-room was twice the size of the little room where the stuffed birds dwelt. It was furnished in quite a modern fashion, and looked very nice indeed to me. The cloth on the table was so white that it did not even look dirty by contrast with the snow outside, and the silver shone – oh, like a number of looking-glasses; and the knives were so clean and new-looking.
Miss Grace just opened her eyes for the tenth of a second when I entered the room, and I wondered what reflection passed through her mind, but she gave utterance to none. She invited me to seat myself, and I had the most delicious meal I had ever partaken of in the whole course of my life. Nancy flew in and out, serving us with more and more dainties: puddings, jellies – oh dear, what delicious things jellies are when you have never tasted them before! Then there was fruit – apples which, Miss Donnithorne told me, had grown and ripened in her own garden; and finally we cracked nuts and became excellent friends, sitting close to the fire. Nancy’s final entrance had been with coffee on a little tray. Miss Donnithorne poured out a cup for me and a cup for herself.
“We’ll go out presently,” she said. “It’s a lovely day for a walk. I shall take you a good way and show you some of the beauties of the place. But what about your boots? Are they strong?”
“Oh, pretty well,” I replied.
“I can lend you some rubbers; but what size are your feet?”
I pushed out one of my feet for inspection.
“Dear, dear!” said Miss Donnithorne, “they’re bigger than mine. Mine are rather small, and yours – you will forgive me, but yours are enormous; they really are. Have you been attended to by a shoemaker?”
“Oh, Hannah gets my boots for me,” I said. “She always has them made to order, as she says they last twice as long; and she always insists on having them made two sizes too large. She says she can’t be troubled by hearing me complain that they are too small.”
“Dear