if you don't take care," she said rather sharply, though not unkindly. "And my umbrella – my best umbrella! I declare it's too bad – the moment one's back is turned."
"It's the mast, Miss Susan," said Gladys eagerly. "We thought you wouldn't mind. It's the mast of the ship that's going to take us over the sea to Papa."
Some softer feeling came over Susan as she glanced at Gladys's flushed, half-frightened face.
"Poor little things!" she said to herself gently. "Well, be sure to put it back in its place when you've done with it. And now, aunt, come downstairs with me, I have ever so many things to say to you."
Mrs. Lacy obeyed meekly.
"You haven't told them yet, have you, aunt?" said Susan, as soon as they were alone.
"Yes, I told them a little," said the old lady. "Somehow I could not help it. I went upstairs and found them playing at the very thing – it seemed to come so naturally. I know you will think it foolish of me, Susan, but I can't help feeling their going, even though it is better for them."
"It's quite natural you should feel it," said Susan in a not unkindly tone. "But still it is a very good thing it has happened just now. For you know, aunt, we have quite decided that you must live with us – "
"You are very good, I know," said Mrs. Lacy, who was really very dependent on her niece's care.
"And yet I could not have asked Mr. Rexford to have taken the children, who, after all, are no relations, you know."
"No," said Mrs. Lacy.
"And then to give them up to their own father is quite different from sending them away to strangers."
"Yes, of course," said the old lady, more briskly this time.
"On the whole," Miss Susan proceeded to sum up, "it could not have happened better, and the sooner the good-byings and all the bustle of the going are over, the better for you and for me, and for all concerned, indeed. And this leads me to what I wanted to tell you. Things happen so strangely sometimes. This very morning I have heard of such a capital escort for them."
Mrs. Lacy looked up with startled eyes.
"An escort," she repeated. "But not yet, Susan. They are not going yet. Wilfred speaks of 'some weeks hence' in his letter."
"Yes; but his letter was written three weeks ago, and, of course, I am not proposing to send them away to-day or to-morrow. The opportunity I have heard of will be about a fortnight hence. Plenty of time to telegraph, even to write, to Captain Bertram to ensure there being no mistake. But anyway we need not decide just yet. He says he will write again by the next mail, so we shall have another letter by Saturday."
"And what is the escort you have heard of?" asked Mrs. Lacy.
"It is a married niece of the Murrays, who is going to India in about a fortnight. They start from here, as they are coming here on a visit the last thing. They go straight to Marseilles."
"But would they like to be troubled with children?"
"They know Captain Bertram, that is how we came to speak of it. And Mrs. Murray is sure they would be glad to do anything to oblige him."
"Ah, well," said Mrs. Lacy. "It sounds very nice. And it is certainly not every day that we should find any one going to France from a little place like this." For Mrs. Lacy's home was in a rather remote and out-of-the-way part of the country. "It would save expense too, for, as they have no longer a regular nurse, I have no one to send even as far as London with them."
"And young Mrs. – , I forget her name – her maid would look after them on the journey. I asked about that," said Susan, who was certainly not thoughtless.
"Well, well, we must just wait for Saturday's letter," said Mrs. Lacy.
"And in the meantime the less said about it the better, I think," said Susan.
"Perhaps so; I daresay you are right," agreed Mrs. Lacy.
She hardly saw the children again that day. Susan, who seemed to be in an unusually gracious mood, took them out herself in the afternoon, and was very kind. But they were so little used to talk to her, for she had never tried to gain their confidence, that it did not occur to either Gladys or Roger to chatter about what nevertheless their little heads and hearts were full of. They had also, I think, a vague childish notion of loyalty to their old friend in not mentioning the subject, even though she had not told them not to do so. So they trotted along demurely, pleased at having their best things on, and proud of the honour of a walk with Miss Susan, even while not a little afraid of doing anything to displease her.
"They are good little things after all," thought Susan, when she had brought them home without any misfortune of any kind having marred the harmony of the afternoon. And the colour rushed into Gladys's face when Miss Susan sent them up to the nursery with the promise of strawberry jam for tea, as they had been very good.
"I don't mind so much about the strawberry jam," Gladys confided to Roger, "though it is very nice. But I do like when any one says we've been very good, don't you?"
"Yes," said Roger; adding, however, with his usual honesty: "I like bofe, being praised and jam, you know, Gladdie."
"'Cos," Gladys continued, "if we are good, you see, Roger, and I really think we must be so if she says so, it will be very nice for Papa, won't it? It matters more now, you see, what we are, 'cos of going to him. When people have people of their own they should be gooder even than when they haven't any one that cares much."
"Should they?" said Roger, a little bewildered. "But Mrs. Lacy cares," he added. Roger was great at second thoughts.
"Ye – s," said Gladys, "she cares, but not dreadfully much. She's getting old, you know. And sometimes – don't say so to anybody, Roger – sometimes I think p'raps she'll soon have to be going to heaven. I think she thinks so. That's another reason, you see," reverting to the central idea round which her busy brain had done nothing but revolve all day, "why it's such a good thing Papa's sent for us now."
"I don't like about people going to heaven," said Roger, with a little shiver. "Why can't God let them stay here, or go over the sea to where it's so pretty. I don't want ever to go to heaven."
"Oh, Roger!" said Gladys, shocked. "Papa wouldn't like you to say that."
"Wouldn't he?" said Roger; "then I won't. It's because of the angels, you know, Gladdie. Oh, do you think," he went on, his ideas following the next link in the chain, "do you think we can take Snowball with us when we go?"
"I don't know," said Gladys; and just then Mrs. Lacy's housemaid, who had taken care of them since their nurse had had to leave them some months before, happening to bring in their tea, the little girl turned to her with some vague idea of taking her into their confidence. To have no one but Roger to talk to about so absorbing a matter was almost too much. But Ellen was either quite ignorant of the great news, or too discreet to allow that she had heard it. In answer to Gladys's "feeler" as to how hens travelled, and if one might take them in the carriage with one, she replied matter-of-factly that she believed there were places on purpose for all sorts of live things on the railway, but that Miss Gladys had better ask Miss Susan, who had travelled a great deal more than she, Ellen.
"Yes," replied Gladys disappointedly, "perhaps she has; but most likely not with hens. But have you stayed at home all your life, Ellen? Have you never left your father and mother till you came here?"
Whereupon Ellen, who was a kindly good girl, only a little too much in awe of Miss Susan to yield to her natural love of children, feeling herself on safe ground, launched out into a somewhat rose-coloured description of her home and belongings, and of her visits as a child to the neighbouring market-town, which much amused and interested her little hearers, besides serving for the time to distract their thoughts from the one idea, which was, I daresay, a good thing. For in this life it is not well to think too much or feel too sure of any hoped-for happiness. The doing so of itself leads to disappointment, for we unconsciously paint our pictures with colours impossibly bright, so that the real cannot but fall short of the imaginary.
But baby Gladys – poor