"Yes," said Dicky; "and we just gave rotten books. But it's no use grizzling over it now. It's all over, and he won't get married again while she's alive."
This was true, for we live in England which is a morganatic empire where more than one wife at a time is not allowed. In the glorious East he might have married again and again and we could have made it all right about the wedding present.
"I wish he was a Turk for some things," said Oswald, and explained why.
"I don't think she would like it," said Dora.
Oswald explained that if he was a Turk, she would be a Turquoise (I think that is the feminine Turk), and so would be used to lots of wives and be lonely without them.
And just then . . . You know what they say about talking of angels, and hearing their wings? (There is another way of saying this, but it is not polite, as the present author knows.)
Well, just then the postman came, and of course we rushed out, and among Father's dull letters we found one addressed to "The Bastables Junior." It had an Italian stamp—not at all a rare one, and it was a poor specimen too, and the post-mark was Roma.
That is what the Italians have got into the habit of calling Rome. I have been told that they put the "a" instead of the "e" because they like to open their mouths as much as possible in that sunny and agreeable climate.
The letter was jolly—it was just like hearing him talk (I mean reading, not hearing, of course, but reading him talk is not grammar, and if you can't be both sensible and grammarical, it is better to be senseless).
"Well, kiddies," it began, and it went on to tell us about things he had seen, not dull pictures and beastly old buildings, but amusing incidents of comic nature. The Italians must be extreme Jugginses for the kind of things he described to be of such everyday occurring. Indeed, Oswald could hardly believe about the soda-water label that the Italian translated for the English traveller so that it said, "To distrust of the Mineral Waters too fountain-like foaming. They spread the shape."