All the preparations for school had been made, and it was the day before
I was to leave. My trunks--I had several now--were packed. Augusta was
coming too, and so was Hermione. Hermione had come to spend the last
evening with us in the old house behind the great college. She was very
much interested and highly pleased.
The last fortnight of my time at home had gone on wings. Lady Lilian
St Leger had lifted me into a new world. She was a daring, bright,
true-hearted girl. She did not mind treating me with a sort of playful
lightness which was very refreshing after the stifling time I had spent
in that awful drawing-room; but she also had said good-bye.
"We shall meet in the holidays," she said. "I shall see you sometimes.
I am to come out as soon as ever I am presented, and I'll be presented
at the first Drawing-room. After that it will be nothing but rush and
tumult; I'll be wishing myself dead all the time, for there will be no
hope of anything. I am going to make up my mind to accept the first man
who proposes for me."
"Oh, but you won't do that!" I said, for I had very primitive and very
sacred ideas on such topics.
"Oh, just to get rid of the thing! I only trust he'll be young and poor
and ugly. If he is young and poor and ugly, and I fall madly in love
with him, there'll be such a rumpus, and that would be a rare bit of
fun. But dear, darling mamma will have to give way, because I can
always make her do what I like."
"But your father?" I said.
"Oh, I'll manage him too."
Thus she talked and chattered; but she was not out yet. She was very
good-natured, and told me a great deal about the school.
"I do envy your going there," she said. "I wish I was fifteen. And you
are so jolly honest-looking and so downright plain. I do think you are
unfairly equipped for this life, Dumps."
She would never call me anything else now; I was Dumps to her--her
darling, plain, practical, jolly Dumps. That was how she spoke of me.
She had written to the girls whom she knew at the school, and had told
me to be sure to introduce myself as her very dearest friend, as her
newest and dearest.
"They will embrace you; they will take you into their bosoms for my
sake," she said.
I am afraid I was very much enamoured of Lady Lilian; she was the type
of girl who would excite the admiration of any one. Even Hermione, who
knew her quite well, and whom I had liked in many ways until I met Lady
Lilian, seemed commonplace and spiritless beside her.
But Hermione, Augusta, and I were to go to school together. Of course
we would be friends. A lady, a special chaperon, was to take us across
the Channel; we would start on the following morning, and should arrive
in Paris in the evening. I was excited now it came to the point Hannah
met me on the last evening as I was going upstairs. She was standing
just beside a corner of my own landing. She sprang out on me.
"Hannah," I said, "you did give me a start."
She laid her hand on my arm.
"Let me come into your room with you," she said.