We were in the very height of our excitement, and were scrambling eagerly for pretended bon-bons, which Lucy was flinging from an imaginary balcony, when the door was suddenly opened, and Aunt Agatha entered, ushering in a visitor.
"This is my little flock, Mrs. Winstanley—" she began, then stopped short in utter dismay at the scene of confusion before her.
My aunt's sense of humour was not keen; her orderly nursery and tidy family were her pride, and the sight of the tumbled heads and crumpled pinafores, the clothes strewn hither and thither, and the painted and blackened faces of her ordinarily well-behaved darlings was enough to justify her look of extreme annoyance. She turned at once upon the true offender.
"Philippa, what have you been doing with the children?" she asked sharply.
No culprit caught red-handed could have felt more guilty or discomfited than I. I gasped out something incoherent about "carnival", and burst into tears.
But here the visitor saved the situation.
"It is very kind of the little ones to be en fête to welcome us, Mrs. Seaton," she said gently. "My own children often dress up when they wish to give me a treat. I have not seen a carnival since I was last at Nice, and I don't think any of the masquers were so natural as these. So this is little Philippa!" she continued as she sat down, and drew me quietly to her side. "I hope you will learn to love me some day, for your mother was my dearest friend, and I could not pass through London to-day without taking the opportunity of coming to see her only child."
She kissed me with a warmth I had missed since I bade that last good-bye to my father; there were tears in her eyes, and, strangely moved, I clung to her, crying a little, but more comforted than I could have found words to tell.
It was thus that I first made acquaintance with one of the truest friends of my life.