With these hopes, Kate was only moderately sorry to leave the sea and
pine-trees behind her, and find herself once more steaming back to
London, carrying in her hand a fine blue and white travelling-bag,
worked for her by her two little friends, but at which Lady Barbara
had coughed rather dryly. In the bag were a great many small white
shells done up in twists of paper, that pretty story "The Blue
Ribbons," and a small blank book, in which, whenever the train
stopped, Kate wrote with all her might. For Kate had a desire to
convince Sylvia Joanna that one was much happier without being a
countess, and she thought this could be done very touchingly and
poetically by a fable in verse; so she thought she had a very good
idea by changing the old daisy that pined for transplantation and
found it very unpleasant, into a harebell.
A harebell blue on a tuft of moss
In the wind her bells did toss.
That was her beginning; and the poor harebell was to get into a hot-
house, where they wanted to turn her into a tall stately campanula,
and she went through a great deal from the gardeners. There was to
be a pretty fairy picture to every verse; and it would make a
charming birthday present, much nicer than anything that could be
bought; and Kate kept on smiling to herself as the drawings came
before her mind's eye, and the rhymes to her mind's ear.
So they came home; but it was odd, the old temper of the former
months seemed to lay hold of Kate as soon as she set foot in the
house in Bruton Street, as if the cross feelings were lurking in the
old corners.
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