To make it sufficient she
must walk a great deal, and sleep at the smallest village inns, and
eat the plainest food. And how much shorter, then, would the money
go, if it had to supply two with food and the other necessities of
the journey? Cecile resolved that, if possible, they would not touch
the money laid in the Russia-leather purse until they really got into
France. Her present plan was to walk to London. London was not so
very far out of Kent, and once in London, the place where she had
lived all, or almost all her life, she would feel at home. Cecile
even hoped she might be able to earn a little money in London, money
enough to take Maurice and Toby and herself into France. She had not
an idea how the money was to be earned, but even if she had to sweep
a crossing, she thought she could do it. And, for their walk into
London, there was that precious half sovereign, which kind Mr.
Preston had given Maurice, and which Cecile had put by in the same
box which held the leather purse. They might have to spend a shilling
or two of that half sovereign, and for the rest, Cecile began to
consider what they could do to save now. It was useless to expect
such foresight on Maurice's part. But for herself, whenever she got
an apple or a nut, she put it carefully aside. It was not that her
little teeth did not long to close in the juicy fruit, or to crack
the hard shell and secure the kernel. But far greater than these
physical longings was her earnest desire to keep true to her solemn
promise to the dead--to find, and give her mother's message and her
mother's gift to the beautiful, wayward English girl who yet had
broken that mother's heart.
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