CHAPTER VII:  IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND

Chapter VII

IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND

It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so, it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still ardent though fearful girl.  Hers grew to be a dread that would have seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed—­for what can one heart know of the sickness of another’s, of its hurried beating when hope beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails?  How swift to Loveday seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that, run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time’s urgency!  How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise only to burst into the empty air!  So each moment rose, rounded, to meet Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the present and found perpetually that it was the past.

After her failure with Mrs. Lear it occurred to Loveday to go where she should have gone in the first place—­whither she might have gone had not some irk of conscience whispered her that her purpose was all too worldly—­to the wife of the Vicar, Mrs. Veale.  This Mrs. Veale was the good lady who had stood sponsor for Loveday on that day when Aunt Senath had perforce to blazon her sister’s shame at the font.  Ever since that day Mrs. Veale had done her duty by Loveday without fail, instructing her in the catechism regularly and occasionally presenting her with the clothing of Miss Letitia Veale—­who was a couple of years older than Loveday—­when the garments were outgrown and when they were suitable.  Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station, but flannels, thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could not have divined a female within their folds, were always forthcoming to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds.

It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked—­with the timidity that always assailed her, to her own annoyance, when she was about to see her godmother—­on the back door of the Vicarage.  She heard her own voice, robbed of its warm eagerness, asking of the stout cook whether Mrs. Veale could see her for a minute.  The cook sent the housemaid to the Vicar’s lady with the request, and Loveday stood in the large, sunny kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o’clock dinner.  There was butcher’s meat, she could smell that (she had tasted it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm, where