Silvia started and looked round. Some one was leaning over the balustrade in the passage behind them.
'Why, Uncle Algernon!' exclaimed Robin after a pause of surprise; 'you haven't heard all we have been saying?'
'Well, I don't know about all,' said Uncle Algernon, laughing; 'but I heard about Bluecoat and Lady Greensleeves and the goloshes of fortune. So you want the portraits to tell you their stories, do you, Silvia?'
'Oh Uncle Algernon, do you think us very silly? But papa says you know their stories. Do you really? And how did you find them out?'
'How do you know that I haven't a pair of those goloshes hidden away in that cupboard in my dressing-room?'
'I wish you had!' sighed Silvia, looking wistfully at Lady Greensleeves' mischievous brown eyes and rosy smiling mouth.
'Well, but if you do know the stories, why shouldn't you tell them to us?' suggested Robin. 'It would be almost as jolly as if the pictures were to speak themselves; wouldn't it, Silvia?'
'Not quite, I think,' Silvia said, with a doubtful glance at Uncle Algernon. 'You see, it would be so nice to hear all that they used to think, and how Horsemandown looked in those days,—all in their own words, you know, Robin.'
'Ah, but then they would talk in an old way, like the people in history books,—"hath," and "natheless," and "by my halidome." I can't bear coming to those kind of words in Mrs. Markham.'
'Well, Silvia, what do you say to this?' said Uncle Algernon after a moment's silence, during which he had seated himself between his nephew and niece on the broad step. 'Lady Greensleeves and I are very old friends. I am going to take down her portrait to-night and clean it in my dressing-room. Now, suppose I were to ask her, as a very particular favour, to tell her story to you and Robin in her own words.'