However, on a bright sunny morning, with a lot to do, with farewell visits to pay to Miss Potts, Mrs. Tickell, and many others, a journey to the sea before one, two new cloaks, hidden away where they could easily be got at, a little sister, and the sea, and a holiday at the end of the journey, no one could feel quite, quite miserable. And with the sun shining and the breeze blowing, and Betsy trotting quickly along between the flower-decked hedges, and Geoffrey beside one making fun, it did not seem possible that anything very, very dreadful _could_ happen, and Priscilla’s spirits rose enormously.
She felt quite sorry for Hocking, who was to be left behind.
“O Hocking,” she sighed, “don’t you wish you were going to the seaside too?”
But Hocking did not seem at all perturbed at being left behind. “What’s the use of wishing, miss?” he said slowly; “if wishes were ’orses beggars would ride.”
Priscilla looked at him for a moment, puzzled, then looked away to try and think out his meaning. “I don’t see any sense in that,” she said at last, having thought the matter over for some time. “If they were on horseback they couldn’t beg, and they wouldn’t be beggars.”
“Ezzackly, miss,” said Hocking stolidly, as though that was what he had been arguing, and did not open his lips again.
At the station Priscilla kissed Betsy, shook hands with Hocking, and then went with Geoffrey on to the platform, while her father took the tickets. She wished now that Geoffrey was coming too, and she told him so.
“I wish I was,” said Geoffrey; “but, you see, I’ve got to wait and bring mother and Nurse. If I hadn’t, I’d have gone to old Winter and jolly well told him what I thought of him for frightening a child as small as Loveday. I call it cowardly, and--and he _ought_ to be told of it too.”
Priscilla gasped at the mere thought of Geoffrey’s daring. But after she had said good-bye to him, and he had driven off homewards with Hocking, and she and her father had settled down comfortably in a carriage to themselves, her thoughts flew again to what he had said about Mr. Winter, and by-and-by a thought came into her mind, which grew and grew, until before long it had become a very firm resolution.
If Geoffrey thought it right to go to Mr. Winter and speak for Loveday, it was right for her to do so. She could not speak as severely as Geoffrey said he should, and perhaps it might be better not to; but she could say something, and she made up her mind to go on the very first opportunity--that is, if her father did not do so--and ask to see Mr. Winter, and then apologise for what Loveday had done, and ask him to forgive her.