I stamped about in a fever of impatience until grannie appeared, when I handed both letters to her, and breathlessly awaited her verdict.

“Well, child, what do you say?”

“Say?  I won’t go!  I can’t!  I won’t!  Oh, grannie, don’t send me there—­I would rather die.”

“My dear child, I would not he willing to part with you under any circumstances, but I cannot interfere between a mother and her child.  I would not have allowed any one to do it with me, and believe in acting the same towards any other mother, even though she is my own daughter.  However, there is time to get a reply before you would have to start, so I will write and see what can be done.”

The dear old lady, with her prompt businesslike propensities, sat down and wrote there and then.  I wrote also—­pleaded with my mother against her decree, begged her to leave me at Caddagat, and assured her I could never succeed at M’Swat’s.

I did not sleep that night, so arose betimes to await the first traveller, whom I asked to post the letters.

We got an answer to them sooner than we expected—­at least grannie did.  Mother did not deign to write to me, but in her letter to grannie I was described as an abominably selfish creature, who would not consider her little brothers and sisters.  I would never be any good; all I thought of was idleness and ease.  Most decidedly I could not get out of going to M’Swat’s, as mother had given her word.

“I am sorry for you,” said grannie, “but it cannot be helped.  You can stay there for two or three years, and then I can have you here again.”

I was inconsolable, and would not listen to reason.  Ah! that uncle Jay-Jay had been at home to rescue me from this.  Then aunt Helen brought her arguments to bear upon me, and persuaded me to think it was necessary for the benefit of my little brothers and sisters that I should take up this burden, which I knew would be too much for me.

It was a great wrench to be torn away from Caddagat—­from refinement and comfort—­from home!  As the days till my departure melted away, how I wished that it were possible to set one’s weight against the grim wheel of time and turn it back!  Nights I did not sleep, but drenched my pillow with tears.  Ah, it was hard to leave grannie and aunt Helen, whom I worshipped, and turn my back on Caddagat!

I suppose it is only a fancy born of the wild deep love I bear it, but to me the flowers seem to smell more sweetly there; and the shadows, how they creep and curl! oh, so softly and caressingly around the quaint old place, as the great sun sets amid the blue peaks; and the never-ceasing rush of the crystal fern-banked stream—­I see and hear it now, and the sinking sun as it turns to a sheet of flame the mirror hanging in the backyard in the laundry veranda, before which the station hands were wont to comb and wash themselves.  Oh, the memories that crowd upon me!  Methinks I can smell the roses that clamber up the veranda posts and peep over the garden gate.  As I write my eyes grow misty, so that I cannot see the paper.