.

CHAPTER VII.

THE STORY BOOK LADY.

Annie found the road hot and the way long. As she said, she was a very
good walker, and was never daunted by difficulties or dangers either
real or imaginary. She was impressed by Boris's bright little face, and
Kitty's story of his fidelity to the path of duty touched her quick and
affectionate nature. Annie Forest, the grown-up girl, was very like
Annie Forest, the child. She was still intensely impulsive, wayward, and
eager. Her faults were in a great manner subdued, but they were not
eradicated. She was intensely affectionate, brave, and true as steel;
but she was apt to be both heedless and thoughtless. When rushing away
to rescue Boris, it never once entered into her head that the secret of
her absence might prove very troublesome to poor Kitty, and that the
rest of the party might suffer uneasiness on her account. Without any
adventure from bull or bull-dog, without endangering her life in the
bog, which turned out to be almost non-existent at this time of year,
she reached the Towers at the most sultry time of the day, and appeared
upon the scene between one and two o'clock, a tired, flushed, and very
thirsty Annie. All during her walk she pictured Boris's state of
despair. She saw in her mind's eye a vision of his little, flushed,
tear-stained face. She thought of Nell, too, and imagined the rapture
with which the ugly duckling would greet her, the deliverer of the
oppressed.

Annie entered the Towers by a side entrance, and, skirting a pretty,
shady lawn, approached the house by the nearest way. As she did so, she
was attracted by voices which seemed to proceed from out of a clump of
trees. She stepped close to the spot from where the sound proceeded,
and, craning her neck, looked over the thick laurustinus bushes, which
enclosed a very tiny lawn or plot of grass.

Seated here, in the utmost peace and apparent contentment, were the poor
victims for whom she had exerted herself so terribly. Nell was lying
full length on her back on the grass. Boris was seated tailorwise on the
ground a little way off. Nell had a white rat curled up in her hair and
another nestling in her neck. Boris was feeding some white hares and
some pet rabbits. The children were eagerly talking to their animals,
and Annie had to own to herself that there was nothing in the least
unhappy or even morbid in the sound of either of the voices.

For a moment the children's perfect happiness a