But the banishment of Rupert had left a kind of dull blankness which made it difficult to start new ideas. There was a sort of feeling like a very wet Sunday when there is some one ill in the house and you can’t go to church. In Caroline and Charlotte there was a deep unacknowledged feeling that they ought to be very good in order to make up for ‘poor Rupert.’ And Charles cared little for anything but swimming, in which art he was progressing so far that he sometimes knew, even in the water, which were his arms and which were his legs, and could at least imagine that he was making the correct movements with all four.
Uncle Charles was less frequently visible even than at first, though when he did appear he was more like an uncle and less like a polite acquaintance. The books the children had discovered had meant a very great deal to him. He told them so more than once. He went away now, almost every other day, to London to the British Museum, to Canterbury to its Library, and once, for two days, to look up some old parchments in the Bodleian Library, which, as of course you know, meant going to Oxford. Mr. Penfold was very kind, and the children did quite a lot of building under his directions, but altogether it was a flattish time.
Then suddenly things began to grow interesting again. What began it was the visit of a tall gentleman in spectacles. He had a long nose and a thin face with a slow, pleasant smile. He called when the Uncle was out and left a card. Caroline heard Harriet explaining that the Master was out, and rushed after the caller in hospitable eagerness.
‘I’m sure uncle wouldn’t like you to go away without resting,’ she said breathlessly, when he stopped at the sound of her pattering feet on the gravel, and she caught up with him, ‘after you’ve come such a long way and such a hot day, too.’
‘After you’ve brought me out so far and made me trot so quick,’ he answered. And after that of course one could no longer regard him as a stranger. Charlotte and Charles, in the meantime, had hastily examined the gentleman’s card in the Russian bowl on the hall table.
‘Mr. Alfred Appleby,’ it said, and added, as Charlotte said, ‘most of the alphabet,’ beginning with F.R.S., F.S.A., and this mingled with his name so that when Caroline privately asked them what was on the card, they could only think of Mr. Alphabet.
Mr. Appleby accepted Caroline’s invitation and turned back with her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘that I can’t take you straight into the drawing-room, but if you don’t mind waiting in the dining-room a minute, I’ll get the drawing-room key and take you in there, only I’m afraid the dining-room’s rather awful, because we’ve been thinking of playing Red Indians, and the gum is drying on the scalps on most of the chairs.’
Mr. Appleby declined the drawing-room at any price, and was able to tell them several things they did not know about Red Indians, wampum, moccasins, and war-paint. He was felt to be quite the nicest thing that had happened since what Caroline and Charlotte in private conversation always spoke of as ‘that awful image day.’ When Mrs. Wilmington came in to see what those children were up to, Mr. Appleby won her heart by addressing her as Mrs. Davenant. ‘Took me for the lady of the house at once,’ she told Harriet. And Mrs. Wilmington drew Caroline aside and said:
‘If you’d like to ask the gentleman to lunch, Miss Caroline, please yourself. There’s fowls, as it happens, and a Paradise pudding, and peas. Perhaps your uncle would wish it.’