As the first sensation of alarm and indignation provoked naturally by the treatment she had received, by the abruptness with which her life of dependence had been ended, died away, Caroline became conscious that there was an undoubted charm about her present situation. A day before, the future (when she had thought about it) had stretched before her in a grey, a monotonous, an almost desolate fashion. Now all things were possible, and hope began almost immediately to shed a glow on her thoughts.

It was an amazingly delightful sensation to feel that she owned no master.

Indeed, she felt a little irritated now with herself that she should have supported so much with such an unquestioning docility, or that having given so much obedience she should never have tried to satisfy herself why this should have been exacted.

At school, of course, it had been the outcome of rules, of a _regime_ which had existed ever since she could remember, but when the school life had ended, and she had gone to Mrs. Baynhurst, there really had been no occasion, so she told herself now, to have accepted the laws laid down for her with the same old obedience.

"Only she really never gave me the chance to speak," the girl mused to herself, "and then I was such a little idiot when I first met her that she frightened me! I expect she will be furious because I went to Mr.

Haverford. Now that I have seen him and spoken with him, it is easy enough to understand why his mother prefers to see him only on rare occasions. He has a blunt, straightforward way about him which must be an abomination to her. He was not too amiable to me. Still, I must do him justice," Caroline admitted here readily; "he saw at once that I had a sort of claim on him, and duty with him evidently counts for a good deal."

She turned comfortably on the soft pillow.

It was her first experience of a really luxurious bed, for she had been better housed and better fed at school than as a dependant in Mrs.

Baynhurst's household.

She ought really to have gone to sleep, but whenever she closed her eyes some new thought of the morrow and of all the other morrows would make them spring open again.

The events of the last few hours had been so new that they had left her startled out of her usual quiet acquiescence. Mrs. Brenton's warm sympathy seemed to Caroline a heaven-sent gift. She had never realized the lack of this sympathy in her life till now, nor, in truth, all the many other things that she had lacked--those trivial everyday things which stock the lives of most young creatures. Her childish joys had all been secondhand ones. She had never had holidays, never any excitement; there had been no Christmas or birthday presents for her, no books or work-baskets, lace collars or ribbons. As a matter of fact, she did not even know on what date she had been born, and except for her school friends, and the little children whom she had taught the last two years, she had never been kissed. Yet for all this she had been a happy child and a happy girl.

Her orphanhood had cast no blight upon her, and she had made pleasures for herself out of her very unpromising surroundings, as most healthy young creatures will do.

Perhaps her greatest trial since she had lived with Octavia Baynhurst had been the fact that she had never once left London, and the call of the country to her nature at times had been so pressing that she had felt like a wild flower cribbed and confined in a world of bricks and mortar.

There had not even been a green leaf on which she could look. Mrs.

Baynhurst did not care for flowers. Neither did she consider it necessary that anybody required exercise or fresh air.

Caroline had been rather a plump girl when she had said "good-bye" to her school, but she had wasted woefully in the last ten months. Though she had called herself strong when she had been speaking to Rupert Haverford, she possessed at this moment very little of her normal physical strength, but she had the force of a powerful will (although up to the present she had had scant opportunity of exercising this) and great courage, and to this she added the blessed gift of a cheerful spirit.

With the very smallest encouragement Caroline Graniger would be happy.

There was nothing lachrymose about her or subservient. She had gone to Mrs. Baynhurst's primed with good intentions and eager to give of her very best to the woman who had claimed her.

Her schoolmistress had evidently been relieved to pa.s.s on the responsibility of Caroline to some other person, and, at the same time, had been rather flattered that one of her pupils should have been called upon to fill an important post with a person of such mental eminence.

Reflecting now on the events of the day just gone, Caroline came to the conclusion that she was rather glad there had been no opportunity of speaking with her first guardian, the mistress of the school.

"She would have put me through a cross-examination, and then I should have told her the truth, and then she would have been cross with me. I wonder where she has gone to? I feel sorry I have not written all these months. Perhaps she thinks me very ungrateful, for I firmly believe she kept me for a long time without any money."

This brought her back to the thought of what lay in the immediate future.

"I wish I knew a little more," she said restlessly to herself, "I am really very ignorant. No wonder that Mrs. Baynhurst found me useless!

How she would sneer if she could know I have been trying to teach myself a little all these months!... Having made up her mind to the fact that I am a fool, she would strongly object to have to acknowledge that she had made a mistake, and I am _not_ a fool," said Caroline to herself, with half a sigh and half a smile.

Really the bed was very comfortable, and the room was so cosy and pleasant. She would have liked the night to have lasted much, much longer than its proper span of hours.

"No, I am not a fool," she determined firmly, "and I shall demonstrate this by informing Mr. Haverford to-morrow that, whatever comes, I don't intend to go back to his mother's house. If she _is_ my guardian, she has proved that she is not fit for the post, and as she has practically turned me out of doors, it is not likely that I shall go back and ask for re-admittance. I should like to go to school again, but not here in London, somewhere where I can breathe, where I can run if I feel I want to. No doubt," she mused, half wearily, a little later, "Mr. Haverford will have some suggestions to offer. I dare say he will want me to go into one of his charity inst.i.tutions. Perhaps he will send me to the workhouse."

She laughed at this, and so, thinking and pondering, she grew drowsy by degrees, and sleep came to her just as the day (a clear, bright frosty day) began to creep into existence.

It had been arranged between Mrs. Brenton and Haverford that Caroline Graniger should go to him early in the morning, but when her maid brought the news that Caroline was still sleeping, Mrs. Brenton sent him a telegram, asking him to call that afternoon instead.

It was nearly half-past nine before Caroline Graniger joined Mrs.

Brenton at breakfast. The girl was greatly upset.

"I never slept late in my life before," she said. "I am generally awake about six, and I always get I up soon after I wake."

"You're like me, I expect," said Mrs. Brenton. "I never sleep very well the first part of the night when I am in a strange place, and then, of course, I am drowsy in the morning."

"I was so excited," said Caroline, "I could not go to sleep. It was so strange and so delightful to be in such a nice room. I am not used to luxury. I think I know now how the children feel on Christmas Eve, when they hang up their stockings, or when they expect a birthday. I kept my eye on the chimney, almost expecting Santa Claus to appear every other moment."

She laughed as she warmed her hands by the fire.

"Perhaps he did come, after all," Agnes Brenton said, "and there is something nice waiting for you to-day."

Caroline Graniger turned and looked at the speaker.

"You have already filled my stocking," she said, her thin face full of colour. Mrs. Brenton noticed that her eyes were not black, but dark, very dark blue. "It was your goodness to me last night that made everything so wonderful, so delightful. I never knew that any one could be so kind as you are. I have a much better opinion of the world this morning...."

"Let us talk about yourself," said Mrs. Brenton, as she poured out the coffee. "Of course, you are not going back to Mrs. Baynhurst?"

"No," said Caroline; she was silent a moment, and then she said "No" a second time. "But," she added, "I don't quite know what I _am_ going to do." She stirred her coffee, and coloured. When she had that colour in her face she looked much younger, and rather attractive. "I have been wondering if you would advise me," she said, with some hesitation. "I don't think I have the right to ask you, especially as you are so wonderfully kind to me; but people who are kind always have to pay some penalty. I found out that much when I was a very tiny child."

"How old are you?" asked Mrs. Brenton.

Caroline knitted her brows.

"I believe I am about nineteen. But I don't really know. I only go by what Miss Beamish told me. That is the woman who kept the school where I lived for such a long time," she explained; "and she always said that I was about four when I first went to her."

"Four years old," said Agnes Brenton quickly. She felt a sharp pang of pity for that little forlorn four-year-old child of the past. "That was starting life early with a vengeance."

"Yes," said Caroline Graniger, "but we all have to begin some time or another, and as, apparently, there was no one to object, I began at four." She spoke quite cheerfully. Then she smiled. "Miss Beamish has often told me that I was a very difficult child. They could not get me to eat anything. She declares that very often she had to sit up half the night and nurse me because I would not go to sleep in a bed." The smile rippled into laughter. "I have often tried to imagine Miss Beamish nursing me," she said. "If you knew her you would realize how funny it sounds."

"Funny!" said Agnes Brenton to herself.

She busied herself attending to the material comfort of her guest for a minute or two. Then she said--

"Of course I will advise you, Miss Graniger, and I shall be only too glad to help you if I can. Just tell me what you think you could do.

What would you like to do?" Mrs. Brenton asked, going straight to the point in her practical way.

"It is difficult," said Caroline Graniger, "for I don't quite know what I can do. I have no accomplishments. I adore music, but I was never taught a note. Music was an extra, and I was a charity girl. I can read and write, and do a little arithmetic; I can sew, and I can dig," she finished with another smile. "I am really quite a good gardener," she said. "Whatever I do, I want, if possible, to be somewhere where there is a garden, or at any rate where I can see gra.s.s and some trees. The oppression of bricks and mortar is a great sufferance to me! Mrs.

Baynhurst's house is built in by other houses; the rooms are so dreary.

There is no air, and the windows are never open, and I never got out. I used to drive with her occasionally, but I never walked."

Agnes Brenton fretted her brows into a slight frown.

"Do you like children?" she asked, after a little pause.

The thin, sallow face lit up.