My aunt always spoke very little and very quietly, but there was something in her high-bred style which went right home.

I could scarcely believe that they were addressing me.  Surely they were making a mistake.  This reception was meant for some grand relative honouring them with a visit, and not for the ugly, useless, had little pauper come to live upon their bounty.

Their welcome did more than all the sermons I had ever heard put together towards thawing a little of the pitiless cynicism which encrusted my heart.

“Take the child inside, Helen, as fast as you can,” said grannie, “while I see that the boy attends to the horses.  The plaguey fellow can’t be trusted any further than the length of his nose.  I told him to tie up these dogs, and here they are yelp-yelping fit to deafen a person.”

I left my wet umbrella on the veranda, and aunt Helen led me into the dining-room, where a spruce maid was making a pleasant clatter in laying the table.  Caddagat was a very old style of house, and all the front rooms opened onto the veranda without any such preliminary as a hall, therefore it was necessary to pass through the dining-room to my bedroom, which was a skillion at the back.  While auntie paused for a moment to give some orders to the maid, I noticed the heavy silver serviette rings I remembered so well, and the old-fashioned dinner-plates, and the big fire roaring in the broad white fireplace; but more than all, the beautiful pictures on the walls and a table in a corner strewn with papers, magazines, and several very new-looking books.  On the back of one of these I saw “Corelli”, and on another—­great joy!—­was Trilby.  From the adjoining apartment, which was the drawing-room, came the sweet full tones of a beautiful piano.  Here were three things for which I had been starving.  An impulse to revel in them immediately seized me.  I felt like clearing the table at a bound, seizing and beginning to read both books, and rushing in to the piano and beginning to play upon it there and then, and examine the pictures—­all three things at once.  Fortunately for the reputation of my sanity, however, aunt Helen had by this time conducted me to a pretty little bedroom, and saying it was to be mine, helped me to doff my cape and hat.

While warming my fingers at the fire my eyes were arrested by a beautiful portrait hanging above the mantelpiece.  It represented a lovely girl in the prime of youth and beauty, and attired in floating white dinner draperies.

“Oh, aunt Helen! isn’t she lovely?  It’s you, isn’t it?”

“No.  Do you not recognize it as your mother?  It was taken just before her marriage.  I must leave you now, but come out as soon as you arrange yourself—­your grandmother will be anxious to see you.”

When aunt Helen left me I plastered my hair down in an instant without even a glance in the mirror.  I took not a particle of interest in my attire, and would go about dressed anyhow.  This was one symptom which inclined my mother to the belief of my possible insanity, as to most young girls dress is a great delight.  I had tried once or twice to make myself look nice by dressing prettily, but, by my own judgment, considering I looked as ugly as ever, I had given it up as a bad job.