'Oh uncle!' cried both children at once; 'how delightful! Will you really? But what do you mean? How can she, in her own words?'
'Never mind,' quoth Uncle Algernon, nodding significantly. 'As I said before, she is a very old friend of mine, and I have a strong persuasion that she won't refuse me this; besides, you forget the goloshes of fortune. Nothing can be refused to one, you know, when one has those goloshes on.'
'But, uncle, how can you make her tell it us?'
'Never mind,' said Uncle Algernon again, 'you will see all in good time. Only come to my dressing-room to-morrow when lessons are finished,—you and Robin, nobody else,—and I'll tell you what comes of my interview with her ladyship.'
The dinner-bell rang at this moment, whereupon Uncle Algernon jumped up and beat a hasty retreat into the said dressing-room.
'How does he mean to do it?' asked Silvia, after pondering for a whole minute without speaking.
'I don't know, I can't think, unless he means to write a story about her. You know he does write books; so perhaps——'
But at this juncture the discussion came to an end, for the lamp blazed up in the hall below, and Christie came rushing along the gallery, crying, 'Silvia, Robin, have you really been sitting here in the dark all this time? Why, the tea-bell rang a quarter of an hour ago. There are muffins; and Sydney is eating all the blackberry jam!'
The next morning Lady Greensleeves had disappeared from the staircase. Uncle Algernon had a passion for cleaning oil-paintings, and one or other of the family portraits was always to be found in his room whenever he came to stay at Horsemandown.
Not a moment was lost by Robin and Silvia when four o'clock struck that afternoon, and lessons were over, in rushing to the bright, pleasant room which was always called Uncle Algernon's dressing-room, and held sacred to him, even when he was away on his travels on the other side of the world.