“You see, old lady,” Dad had said only a fortnight ago, speaking one evening a few days after Auntie’s arrival, in a voice which tried—though it couldn’t quite succeed—to be in an ordinary, everyday tone; “you see, you have looked after all of us so long, Auntie says, that I’ve quite forgotten that it’s I who ought to be looking after you!”
“Oh, Dad!” Betty had said, staring.
Auntie hadn’t said it in Dad’s way. She had come along that evening after Betty was in bed. She had sat on the edge too, and had hugged Betty just the same way that Betty hugged Jan, the twin. “Bet, pet,” said Auntie, “you see, you’ve got to go for Daddy’s sake!”
“Oh, Auntie!” Betty had said again, but in a different tone of voice.
“It worries him to see you growing up like this,” said Auntie. “We don’t want to have a Betty with white hair and worrying wrinkles before she’s twenty. And besides, I’m home now from India; and Dad and I used to get on well enough when we were children, you know. So——”
So it was all arranged. That was only a fortnight ago, and now they were all down seeing her off.
“St. Benedick’s, Woodhurst,” was written on her red labels. Betty was really going to school.
“If the train’s late in starting I really and truly think that, Dad, you oughtn’t to stay,” said Betty, leaning out.
But Dad stayed. They all of them stayed. They all of them waved and waved and waved when the train started off as though they would never, never stop waving.
“I’m goin’ on wavin’,” shouted Jack, the twin, running along beside the moving train, “till you come back!”