‘Oh no, they would never think of sending such a child to prison,’ Aunt Grace assured her. ‘You poor little Emmeline, I don’t wonder you looked so white and frightened just now, if you were expecting to hear of Micky’s being sent to prison! But now your mind is easy about him, I want you to tell me what’s been happening to you, my poor child.’
Something in the unexpected gentleness of the question brought the tears into Emmeline’s eyes again. ‘Oh, Aunt Grace,’ she said, ‘I am so very, very sorry!’
Aunt Grace bent over her suddenly, and gave her one of her rare kisses. ‘I know you are, darling,’ she said—she had never called Emmeline ‘darling’ before—‘tell me all about it. Of course I know a good deal from what Micky has told me, but I want to hear it from you too. Tell me from the very beginning. What made you first think of adopting Diamond Jubilee?’
It was very odd; all the morning Emmeline had been dreading more than anything else having to tell her story to Aunt Grace, and yet, now, almost before she knew what she was doing, she found herself pouring it all out as freely and fully as if Aunt Grace had been her most intimate friend. She began by speaking of the Meeting in the Village School, and of how much it had made her want to do good to the poor. Then came the history of the day they had gone to the Fair alone—‘and I knew all the time you wouldn’t like us to go alone, though I pretended to myself that you wouldn’t mind,’ Emmeline confessed—and of the encounter with Diamond Jubilee, and of how it had almost seemed ‘meant’ that they should adopt him when his dire need of being plucked as a brand from the burning was brought home to them so forcibly.
‘I thought how b-beautiful it would be to bring him up to be a m-missionary!’ said Emmeline, with two little sobs at the remembrance of the woeful way in which Diamond Jubilee had disappointed her.
‘I shouldn’t have thought myself he was quite cut out for a missionary,’ said Aunt Grace gravely, though her eyes could not help twinkling a little, ‘but go on.’
Emmeline went on to tell of all the plans for Diamond Jubilee’s welfare, of the Feudal Castle where he was to dwell, and the chocolate and monkey-nuts on which he was to live, and of all their plots and contrivances. Once or twice she noticed that her listener looked away quickly, but she did not pay much attention to this, and was continuing her tale quite gravely and sorrowfully, when all at once Aunt Grace broke into one of those clear, ringing laughs which Emmeline had been wont to consider so frivolous and unsuitable for an aunt. For a moment Emmeline stared at her, puzzled and half offended; then suddenly it struck her for the first time that the whole affair really was rather funny, and she too laughed, though a little doubtfully.
‘I’m so sorry, Emmeline,’ said Aunt Grace; ‘I didn’t mean to laugh, but you raised such an absurd picture in my mind that I simply couldn’t help it!’
‘I don’t mind at all,’ said Emmeline, and it was the truth, though a week ago she would have been greatly displeased at anyone’s venturing to be amused at her.