Mr. Winter took the box at once into his care, and then turned to help their mother, and when the train came in he found them a nice comfortable compartment all to themselves, and having first placed the precious hat-box in safety, and arranged a dozen other things in the rack, he then helped in Priscilla and Loveday and Mrs. Carlyon.
“Good-bye,” he said, when at last the whistle blew to warn them they were about to start. “Good-bye, good-bye, children, and I hope you will write to me sometimes, and tell me what you are doing, and how Miss Potts gets on, for I shall be very lonely without you,” and he stepped quietly out of the carriage as though half ashamed of having said so much; and the last thing they saw as they rolled away was Mr. Winter standing alone on the little bare platform, the wind blowing his white hair about as he waved his hat to them.
“I don’t know how we should ever have got off without Mr. Winter,” said Nurse, who had taken a great liking to him.
“Nor I; nor how we shall get on at home without him,” said Mrs. Carlyon gravely; “I think he will have to come to Trelint.”
“So do I,” sighed Priscilla. “I am sure he will be very lonely without us. I must write to him very often, to cheer him up.”
And Priscilla did. Sometimes it was difficult. She felt disinclined, or she thought there was nothing to say, or she could not spell the words she wanted to use, but she very seldom failed altogether, and she would not have done so at all, had she known how her funny little badly written letters were prized by her old friend.
One day there came a letter from Mr. Winter which sent Priscilla dancing joyously through the house.
“My dear Scylla,” it said--Mr. Winter had called her “Scylla,” because he said that as the little blue flower was the first to push its way through the hard frosty ground, so she had been the first to push her way through his frosty nature:--
“MY DEAR SCYLLA,--Your last letter interested me much, and what you told me of the old house next to Miss Potts made me so anxious to see it that I have determined to come over to Trelint for a few days to have a look at it; so be sure that no one else takes it first. The front of it so close to the street that I can see your house from it, sounds very enticing, and the old-fashioned garden at the back sounds as if it was made on purpose for me; and if I like it as much as I think I shall from what you say, I should not be surprised if, like Miss Potts herself, I felt so at home in Trelint I should never want to leave it again, and then you would be relieved of the task of writing to your dull old friend,