at last, and was in my room. She was bending over me and smoothing my bed-clothes, and telling me over and over again to be a good girl, and I kept on saying, "Oh, Anastasia, don't let the pins stick in," but even that memory faded. Then there came more distinct thoughts that seemed to be not memories but realities. Aunt Penelope sat by my bedside. There was nothing dreamlike about her. She was very upright and full of purpose, and she was always knitting either a long grey stocking or a short sock. She never seemed to waste a moment of her time, and while I looked at her in a dazed sort of way, she kept on saying, "Don't fidget so, Heather," or perhaps she said, "Heather, it's time for your gruel," or, "Heather, my dear, your beef tea is ready for you."
At last there came a day when I remembered everything, and there were no shadows of any sort, and I sat up in bed, a very weak little child. Aunt Penelope was kinder than usual that day. She gave me a little bit of chicken to eat, and I was so hungry that I enjoyed it very much, and then she said:
"Now you will do nicely, Heather, and I hope in future you will be careful of your health and not give me such a fright again."
"Aunt Penelope," I said, "I want to ask you a question, or rather, two questions."
"Ask away, my dear," she replied.
"Did father come here by any chance? While I was in that cloud sort of world I seemed to feel that he came to see me, and that he looked taller and broader than before."
"I should think he did," said Aunt Penelope. "Why, he had to stoop to get in at the door, and when he was in the room his head almost touched the ceiling."
"Then he was here?" I said.
"Yes. He came three times to see you. That was when you were really bad."
"When is he coming again?" I asked.
"Finish your chicken, and don't ask silly questions," snapped Aunt Penelope.
I did finish my chicken, and Aunt Penelope took the plate away.
"Was Anastasia here also?" I asked. "And did I say to her, 'Please, don't let the pins stick in'?"
"The woman who brought you back from India came to see you once or twice," said Aunt Penelope.
"Then she did catch the next train?" I said.
"You have talked enough now, my dear Heather. Lie down and go to sleep."
"When will she come again?" I asked.
"You have talked enough. I am not going to answer any silly questions. Lie down and sleep."
I was very sleepy, and I suppose that when you are really as weak as I was then, you don't feel things very much. Now I allowed Aunt Penelope to lay me flat down in my little bed, and closing my eyes I forgot everything in slumber.
Those are my first memories. I got well, of course, of that childish illness, and Aunt Penelope by and by explained things to me.
Anastasia was not coming back at all, and father had gone to India. Aunt Penelope was rather restrained and rather queer when she spoke of father. She told me also that she had the entire charge of me, and that I was being brought up at her expense, as father had no money to spend on me. She gave me to understand that she was a very poor woman, and could not afford any servant except Buttons, or Jonas, as she called him. She said she preferred a boy in the house to a woman, for he was smarter at going messages and a greater protection at night. I could not understand half what she said. Almost all her narrative was mixed with injunctions to me to be good, to be very good, to love my aunt more than anyone in the world, but to love God best. When I stoutly declared that I loved father better than anyone in any world, she said I was a naughty child. I did not mind that – I kept on saying that I loved father best.
Then I got quite well and was sent to school, to a funny sort of little day school, where I did not learn a great deal, but made friends slowly with other children. I liked school better than home, for Aunt Penelope was always saying, "Don't, don't!" or, "You mustn't, you mustn't!" when I was at home; and as I never knew why I should not do the things she said I was not to do, I kept on doing them in a sort of bewilderment. But at school there were rules of a sort, and I followed them as attentively as I could.
Thus the years went by, and from a little girl of eight years of age I was a tall, slender girl of eighteen, grown up – yes, grown up at last, and I was waiting for father, who was coming back for good, and my heart was full to the brim with longing to see him.
CHAPTER IV
During all these long years I had grown to tolerate Aunt Penelope. I found that her bark was worse than her bite; I found, too, that if I let her alone, she let me alone. She was always changing Buttons, and the new boy was invariably called Jonas, just as the last had been. The parrot kept on living, and kept on shouting at intervals every day, "Stop knocking at the door!" but he never would learn any fresh words, although I tried hard to teach him. He did not like me, and snapped at me when I endeavoured to be kind to him. So I concluded that he was a kind of "double" of Aunt Penelope, and left him alone.
The little house was kept scrupulously clean, but the food was of the plainest, and Aunt Penelope wore the oldest and shabbiest clothes, and she dressed me very badly too. At that time in my career I did not greatly mind about dress. What I did mind was that she never would let me talk about father. She always shut me up or turned the conversation. She had an awful book of musty old sermons, which she set me to read aloud to her the very instant I began to ask her questions about my father, so that by degrees I kept my thoughts to myself. I wrote to father from the very first, but I never got a reply. I used to post the letters myself, so I knew they must have reached him, but he never answered, and as the years went on I wrote less often, for you cannot keep up a correspondence on one side only. I used to wonder at the time if Aunt Penelope kept back his letters to me, but I did not like to accuse her of such a monstrous crime.
At last, however, just after I had passed my eighteenth birthday, and was a tall, shabbily-dressed girl, who had learnt all that could be taught at the High School – the only one to which Aunt Penelope could afford to send me – she herself came to me in a state of great excitement, and said that father was returning home.
"He is coming to settle in England," she said. "I must be frank with you, Heather, and tell you that it is not at all to your advantage that he should do so."
"Aunt Penelope," I answered, "why do you say words of that sort?"
"I say them," she replied, "because I know the world and you don't. Your father is not the sort of man who would do any girl the slightest good."
"You had better not speak against him to me," I said.
"I have taken great pains with you," said Aunt Penelope, "and have brought you up entirely out of my own very slender means. You are, for your age, fairly well educated, you understand household duties. You can light a fire as quickly and deftly as any girl I ever met, and you understand the proper method of dusting a room. You can also do plain cooking, and you can make your own clothes. I don't know anything about your intellectual acquirements, but your teacher, Miss Mansel, at the High School, says that you are fairly proficient. Well, my dear, all these things you owe to me. You came to me a very ignorant, very self-opinionated, silly, delicate little girl. You are now a fine, strong young woman. Your father is returning – he will be here to-morrow."
I clasped my hands tightly together. There was no use in saying to this withered old aunt of mine how I pined for him, how his kindly, good-humoured face, his blue eyes, his grizzled locks, had haunted and haunted me for ten long years.
"I
