Echoes of merry ringing tones, in which her
own mingled, seemed to resound through the wooded paths, where only the
parching wind whistled shrilly to-day, and a boyish voice seemed still
to call impatiently under the lozenge-paned window of the old
school-room, "Gracie, Gracie, are you not done with lessons yet? Do come
out and play." And how dreary "Noel and Chapsal" used to grow all of a
sudden when that invitation came, and with what relentless slowness the
hands of the old clock dragged through the lesson-hour still to run.
But the quaint old window has the shutters on it now, and the eager face
that used to seek his caged playmate through its bars is looking out on
new lands from his wandering home at sea. The little girl, too, who used
to sit in the dim school-room seems to hear other voices calling to her
this afternoon.
And while Grace stands hesitating whether, after all, it might be wise
to go into the garden to hear what old Adam has to say before she
proceeded to the high road, we shall try to find what earnest quest sent
her out this afternoon, in spite of her old nurse's remonstrances and
the east wind.
Grace Campbell's father and mother died when she was very young, and
since then her home had been with her aunt. For the last few years Miss
Hume had been so infirm that she did not feel able to undertake the
journey to Kirklands, a small property in the north of Scotland, which
she inherited from her father.
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