Three times a week on an average Mrs.
Ellerton's pony carriage might be expected to pass along that road.
Every day Marcella watched for it, alive with expectation, her fingers strumming as they pleased.

Then with the first gleam of the white pony in the distance, over would go the music stool, and the child leapt to the window, remaining fixed there, breathing quick and eagerly till the trees on the left had hidden from her the graceful erect figure of Mrs.
Ellerton.

Then her moment of Paradise was over; but the afterglow of it lasted for the day.
So much for romance, for feelings as much like love as childhood can know them, full of kindling charm and mystery.

Her friendship had been of course different, but it also left deep mark.

A tall, consumptive girl among the Cliff House pupils, the motherless daughter of a clergyman-friend of Miss Frederick's, had for some time taken notice of Marcella, and at length won her by nothing else, in the first instance, than a remarkable gift for story-telling.