“I have a very, very big surprise for you, my dears. We’ve just heard from your uncle in Melbourne, and—and you’ll hardly believe it—but he’s coming to see us next week!”
They never remembered quite how they got through it. They only knew that for a space there was dead silence, and then a Babel of voices as they all asked questions together, scarcely heeding Mother’s replies. They only knew that they had come through the ordeal all right, that they had all acted their parts well, and that Mother had never guessed; and as Mollie noted the look of pleasure on her Mother’s face, she was repaid for all her anxiety about the letter she had worried over so much.
Then they all commenced to work and clean up the house for Uncle. They scrubbed and scoured and polished and shone, till every door-knob looked like burnished gold and the window-panes gleamed like diamonds. They swept up all round the house and garden and away outside the gate, till there was not a speck or a straw or a leaf to be seen. Dear me! the house was like a new pin, and the little room on the end verandah was transformed. The washstand out of Mother’s room was put there, and snow-white curtains on the little iron bedstead, and the strip of carpet that Mother always kept away in case of emergency was spread on the floor. A snowy cloth was on the little wooden dressing-table, and a glass vase waiting for the day that Uncle would arrive, when it would be filled with pepper leaves and berries, as there were no flowers left.
They all helped; even Baby was found going round with bits of rag, polishing the already shining door-knobs, or busy, with a saucer of water and rag, “washing” the floors; and Eva and Doris even took the broom down to the bed of the creek and swept up around the favourite gum tree, and threw away twigs and sticks and bushes off the path, and did all in their power to make things spick and span for Uncle.
They all laughed and sang and shouted and talked a lot those days, now that they could speak openly of Uncle’s coming.
“I hope we never have a secret again as long as we live,” said Eva.
“So do I,” said Eileen. “I hope it’s my first and only one. Why, I feel years older since I’ve been keeping this one.”
“I’ll have no more,” declared Doris.
“Me, too,” said Baby, looking solemn.
“Oh, well! anyway, the worst is over,” said Mollie, cheerfully.