‘Do you know, Maudie—listen—I’ve another uncle, belonging to mother.’
‘Oh, Dolly! I thought she had no one!’
‘He told me he was my Uncle Alfred once when he met me in the park with Fraulein, and gave me a note for mother. He is called Mr. Flinders.’
‘But I thought your mother was daughter to Professor Hay?’
‘But this is a half-brother; my grandmother was married before. Uncle Alfrey has an immense light beard, and I think he is very poor. He came once or twice to see mother, and they always sent me out of the room; but I am sure she gave him money—not father’s housekeeping money, but what she got for herself by writing. Once I heard father go out of the house, saying, ‘Well, it’s your own to do as you please with.’ And then mother went to her room, and I know she cried. It was the only time that ever mother cried!’ And as Maude listened, much impressed—‘Once when she had got eleven pounds, and we were going to have bought father such a binocular for a secret as a birthday present, Mr. Flinders came, and she gave him ten of it, and we could only buy just a few slides for father. And she told me she was grieved, but she could not help it, and it would be time for me to understand when I was older.’
‘I don’t think this Uncle Alfrey can be nice,’ said Maude.
‘’Tis quite disgusting if he kisses me,’ said Dolly; ‘but you see he is poor, and all the Mohuns are stuck up, except father, and they wanted mother to despise him, and not help him. And you see, she stuck to him. I don’t like him much; but you see nobody ever was like her! Oh, Maude, if she wasn’t dead!’
And poor Dolores cried as she had not done even at the time of the accident, or in the terrible week that followed, or at the desolate home coming.