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silly, and I don't think I ever felt more than then what an awful lot there were of us.
"Three years' absence in Calcutta or elsewhere may explain my ignorance of these details, but still—"
"I think we'd better go," said Dora. "I'm sorry if we've done anything rude or wrong. We didn't mean to. Good-bye. I hope you'll be happy with the gentleman, I'm sure."
"I hope so too," said Noël, and I know he was thinking how much nicer Albert's uncle was. We turned to go. The lady had been very silent compared with what she was when she pretended to show us Canterbury. But now she seemed to shake off some dreamy silliness, and caught hold of Dora by the shoulder.
"No, dear, no," she said, "it's all right, and you must have some tea—we'll have it on the lawn. John, don't tease them any more. Albert's uncle is the gentleman T told you about. And, my dear children, this is my brother that I haven't seen for three years."
"Then he's a long-lost too," said H. O.
The lady said, "Not now," and smiled at him. And the rest of us were dumb with confounding emotions. Oswald was particularly dumb. He might have known it was her brother, because in rotten grown-up books if a girl kisses a man in a shrubbery that is not the man you think she's in love with; it always turns out to be a brother, though generally the disgrace of the family and not a respectable chaplain from Calcutta.
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 Noël 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 Noël.
"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.
And that is all the story of the long-lost grandmother and Albert's uncle. I am afraid it is rather dull, but it was very important (to him), so I felt it ought to be narrated. Stories about lovers and getting married are generally slow. I like a love-story where the hero parts with the girl at the garden-gate in the gloaming and goes off and has adventures, and you don't see her any more till he comes home to marry her at the end of the book. And I suppose people have to marry. Albert's uncle is awfully old—more than thirty, and the lady is advanced in years—twenty-six next Christmas. They are to be married then. The girls are to be bridesmaids in white frocks with fur. This quite consoles them. If Oswald repines sometimes, he hides it. What's the use? We all have to meet our fell destiny, and Albert's uncle is not extirpated from this awful law.
Now the finding of the long-lost was the very last thing we did for the sake of its being a noble act, so that is the end of the Wouldbegoods, and there are no more chapters after this. But Oswald hates books that finish up without telling you the things you might want to know about the people in the book. So here goes. We went home to the beautiful Blackheath house. It seemed very stately and mansion-like after the Moat House, and every one was most frightfully pleased to see us.
Mrs. Pettigrew cried when we went away. I never was so astonished in my life. She made each of the girls a fat red pincushion like a heart, and each of us boys had a knife bought out of the housekeeping (I mean housekeeper's own) money.
Bill Simpkins is happy as sub-under-gardener to Albert's uncle's lady's mother. They do keep three gardeners—I knew they did. And our tramp still earns enough to sleep well on from our dear old Pig-man.
Our last three days were entirely filled up with visits of farewell sympathy to all our many friends who were so sorry to lose us. We promised to come and see them next year. I hope we shall.
Denny and Daisy went back to live with their father at Forest Hill. I don't think they'll ever be again the victims of the Murdstone aunt—who is really a great-aunt and about twice as much in the autumn of her days as our new Albert's uncle aunt. I think they plucked up spirit enough to tell their father they didn't like her—which they'd never thought of doing before. Our own robber says their holidays in the country did them both a great deal of good. And he says us Bastables have certainly taught Daisy and Denny the rudiments of the art of making home happy. I believe they have thought of several quite new naughty things entirely on their own—and done them too—since they came back from the Moat House.
I wish you didn't grow up so quickly. Oswald can see that ere long he will be too old for the kind of games we can all play, and he feels grown-upness creeping inordiously upon him. But enough of this.
And now, gentle reader, farewell. If anything in these chronicles of the Wouldbegoods should make you try to be good yourself, the author will be very glad, of course. But take my advice and don't make a society for trying in. It is much easier without.
And do try to forget that Oswald has another name besides Bastable. The one beginning with C., I mean. Perhaps you have not noticed what it was. If so, don't look back for it. It is a name no manly boy would like to be called by—if he spoke the truth. Oswald is said to be a very manly boy, and he despises that name, and will never give it to his own son when he has one. Not if a rich relative offered to leave him an immense fortune if he did. Oswald would still be firm. He would, on the honor of the House of Bastable.
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Or, The Bastable Children