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The lady now turned to her reverend and surprising brother and said: “John, go and tell them we’ll have tea on the lawn.”

When he was gone she stood quite still a minute. Then she said: “I’m going to tell you something, but I want to put you on your honor not to talk about it to other people. You see it isn’t every one I would tell about it. He, Albert’s uncle, I mean, has told me a lot about you, and I know I can trust you.”

We said “Yes,” Oswald with a brooding sentiment of knowing all too well what was coming next.

The lady then said: “Though I am not Albert’s uncle’s grandmother, I did know him in India once, and we were going to be married, but we had a–a–misunderstanding.”

“Quarrel?” “Row?” said Noel and H. O. at once.

“Well, yes, a quarrel, and he went away. He was in the Navy then. And then,… well, we were both sorry; but well, anyway, when his ship came back we’d gone to Constantinople, then to England, and he couldn’t find us. And he says he’s been looking for me ever since.”

“Not you for him?” said Noel.

“Well, perhaps,” said the lady.

And the girls said “Ah!” with deep interest. The lady went on more quickly. “And then I found you, and then he found me, and now I must break it to you. Try to bear up….”

She stopped. The branches crackled, and Albert’s uncle was in our midst. He took off his hat. “Excuse my tearing my hair,” he said to the lady, “but has the pack really hunted you down?”

“It’s all right,” she said, and when she looked at him she got miles prettier quite suddenly. “I was just breaking to them….”

“Don’t take that proud privilege from me,” he said. “Kiddies, allow me to present you to the future Mrs. Albert’s uncle, or shall we say Albert’s new aunt?”

* * * * *

There was a good deal of explaining done before tea–about how we got there, I mean, and why. But after the first bitterness of disappointment we felt not nearly so sorry as we had expected to. For Albert’s uncle’s lady was very jolly to us, and her brother was awfully decent, and showed us a lot of first-class native curiosities and things, unpacking them on purpose: skins of beasts, and beads, and brass things, and shells from different savage lands besides India. And the lady told the girls that she hoped they would like her as much as she liked them, and if they wanted a new aunt she would do her best to give satisfaction in the new situation. And Alice thought of the Murdstone aunt belonging to Daisy and Denny, and how awful it would have been if Albert’s uncle had married her. And she decided, she told me afterwards, that we might think ourselves jolly lucky it was no worse.

Then the lady led Oswald aside, pretending to show him the parrot, which he had explored thoroughly before, and told him she was not like some people in books. When she was married she would never try to separate her husband from his bachelor friends, she only wanted them to be her friends as well.

Then there was tea, and thus all ended in amicableness, and the reverend and friendly drove us home in a wagonette. But for Martha we shouldn’t have had tea, or explanations, or lift, or anything. So we honored her, and did not mind her being so heavy and walking up and down constantly on our laps as we drove home.

* * * * *