Elspeth was tenderness itself, but she got hold of a wrong idea.

I was "just homesick," she thought, and needed to be "away home again," with "bairns like myself." I do not know why I never explained the real reason of my distress--children are apt to be reticent on such occasions.

I think a panic seized upon the members of the household, that they were too old to make a child happy.

I was constantly assured that "it was very natural," and I "had been very good." But I was sent back to Riflebury.
No one knew how loth I was to leave, still less that it was to a much older relative than those at The Vine that I owed my expulsion--to my great-great-great-grandfather--Monsieur le Duc de Vandaleur.
Thomas, the cat, purred so loudly as I withdrew, that I think he was glad to be rid of me.
Adolphe alone was against the verdict of the household, and I think believed that I would have preferred to remain.
"I'm sure I thought you was quite sattled, miss," he said, as he saw me off; and he blubbered like a baby.

His transplanted perennials were "sattled" by copious floods of water.