Miss Osric arrived at the Castle on the afternoon following Sydney’s expedition to Dacreshaw.
A carriage was sent to meet the 4 o’clock train, and Sydney, in spite of an uncomfortably shy sensation at the bottom of her heart, begged leave to go and meet her governess.
“Certainly not! it would be most unsuitable!” said Lady Frederica, in her most decided manner, and she walked away, leaving Sydney to wonder why everything she wished to do was either unsuitable or absurd. The words were unknown at No. 20, in that dull old square not far from Euston Station, which was home.
Still, Miss Osric should have a welcome at the Castle if she could not at the station, and Sydney hung up the pictures she had bought at Dacreshaw, and coaxed some lovely hot-house flowers out of the head-gardener, Macintosh, to fill the vases in her governess’s room.
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St. Quentin was rather amused by her extensive preparations. “But you see,” Sydney remarked, when he made a laughing comment on them, “Miss Osric may be feeling just as shy and wretched as I did when I came here, and it will make a difference if somebody is really pleased to see her.”
“Didn’t you think we were pleased to see you?” asked her cousin.
“You were all very kind,” Sydney said doubtfully, “but, you didn’t exactly want me, did you? It is only at home one is really wanted.”
She stopped, remembering his snub on the subject of calling the Chichesters’ house home; but he only said, with a little smile, “Well, go and make your governess welcome in your own way, child. I hear wheels now.” And, as the girl flew out, her long hair streaming behind her, he said half aloud, “I wonder how it would feel to have anyone to care if one were wretched or no!”
Sydney was on the steps to receive Miss Osric, and certainly her shy but eager welcome made a good deal of difference to the feelings of the young governess, bewildered by this plunge into the outside world, made for the sake of the younger ones at home, who needed
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 better education than her father’s means allowed. Mary Osric, just returned from a brilliant career at Lady Margaret Hall, had begged to be allowed to help towards providing some of the advantages she had herself enjoyed for her juniors; and a friend had mentioned her name to Lady Frederica as that of a clever girl, likely to fill suitably the double post of governess and companion to Miss Lisle.
Miss Osric had been considered shy at College, despite her cleverness, and the idea of teaching a strange girl in an absolutely strange place was terrible to her. But she always declared afterwards that the worst was over when Sydney came running out into the hall to welcome her.
“You must be cold!” the girl cried. “Would you like to come straight to your room and take your hat off before tea? Let me carry your umbrella. Be careful how you walk; the floors are very slippery.”
“It is lovely—just like a picture,” said Miss Osric, beginning suddenly to feel less homesick. There was something very winning about Sydney’s tone.
The room where the new arrival was to sleep bore traces also of the same care for her comfort. A bright fire burnt in the grate,
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 a vase of hot-house flowers was on the writing-table, the pictures from Dacreshaw looked charming on the walls, and a little book-case was filled with a selection of Sydney’s best-loved books.
“What a charming room!” the young governess exclaimed, and Sydney, colouring a little, murmured she “was glad Miss Osric liked it.” She stayed with her governess while she took off coat, hat, and fur, and then brought her to the morning-room, where the shaded lamp shed a delicate rose glow over everything and the little tea-table was drawn up to the fire.
“I am so very glad you have come,” said Sydney, as she poured out tea and handed muffins, and Miss Osric began to realise that the duty she had set herself need not necessarily prove a hard one.
“Well, do you like the mentor?” asked St. Quentin, as Sydney came into the library to wish him good-night. “Are you going to be quite happy now you have another girl to play with?”
And Sydney, meeting the real anxiety in his eyes, said “Yes.”
“But she is still hankering after those confounded Chichesters!” her cousin said to
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 himself, when the girl had left him, in which conclusion he was not far wrong.
With the coming of Miss Osric, the “do as you please” system ceased.
Lady Frederica might be lax as regarded solid education. “There’s no need whatsoever to behave as though you are to be a governess, my dear,” she said to Sydney, but she was horrified by the girl’s lack of accomplishments.
“The one and only thing the child can do is to look pretty,” his aunt complained to St. Quentin, “and beauty without style is very little good. Of course, we must be thankful for small mercies—one seldom has big ones to be thankful for—and she might have been fat and podgy! But what in the world those doctor people were about not to give her drill and calisthenic lessons, I can’t think!”
“There were herds of them, I fancy,” said her nephew. “Whenever Sydney mentions them, which isn’t seldom, she springs a new one upon me. They would make an excellent third volume to the Pillars of the House. I don’t suppose there was overmuch cash to spare for accomplishments.”
“I never can think why it is that those people who cannot afford it always have such enormous families,” pursued the lady.
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“If we had done our duty by Sydney as we should, there would have been one less all these eighteen years,” her nephew suggested, and Lady Frederica changed the subject, as she always did when St. Quentin had what she called a “conscientious craze.”
“It’s your health makes you talk like that, my dear boy,” she declared. “You are really getting quite ridiculous about Sydney!”
The round of accomplishments now began in good earnest.
Sydney and Miss Osric breakfasted at eight-thirty, after which, when the weather............