[282]
]“Saturday.
“Dear Mother,
“The awfullest thing has happened. Aunt’s quite dead. She got her palpitations again last night, but she went to bed as usual, and when we got up she was dead. I keep thinking I’m dreaming it all, only I know I’m not because I’ve got her canary in here and she liked it better than anything and always had it in her room. She brought it in to me last night when I was in bed and she said she’d give it to me if I’d promise and swear never to forget to feed it. She said it woke her up too early in a morning so she had to give it away. And she brought her sewing things in, and she’d written ‘Little Dick’ on about six bits of calico and she made me let her sew them into all my coats so when I put one on in a morning I couldn’t help seeing it on the lining and remembering to give it its water and food. I had to unpack my things to get the coats out, but I’m glad now I did. I wish I’d done more things for her, and oh I do wish young Clinch and me hadn’t laughed at her when she talked German. I’d talk it now to her till my tongue fell out if it would do any good. The doctor was here an awful time and people keep coming all the time now. Grandfather doesn’t seem to care very much; he’s just sitting in his usual chair in the salon, and he’s just looking straight out the window all the time, and he’s drank an awful lot of brandy. The [283] ]doctor says he’s going to get him to go to Egypt, he says someone must look after him and at Alexandrea there’s Aunt Helene’s cousin and she’s married to a clergyman there, only he’s dead and she could look after him.
“It’s pretty awful mother to think you’ve been horrid when she’s dead. I used to hide often when she wanted to go out, and it was lonely for her plugging down to the river alone. And she used to want me to practise my things for Vollmar and I wouldn’t and she’d give me shillings and half-crowns if I would. And I used to be always laughing over her German,—it makes me feel pretty sick to night to think how beastly I’ve been. Fraulein Schliessman made me go in and look at her, and she looks the littlest whitest thing, and her hair isn’t curled, it’s only just lying quiet and straight on the pillow and she only looks as if she was very fast asleep, only they’ve put so many flowers all over her you can’t help knowing she’s dead. I took little Dick in and let him touch her hand, I knew she’d like it and the little chap wasn’t a bit afraid and picked a violet out of her hand. Oh mother I wish some of you were here; it’s awful to go to bed and think of her being left in her room and no one with her just because she’s dead. It’s the next room to mine and I feel all the time I can see how quietly she’s lying and I can smell the flowers.
“Alf.”
[284]
]That was the last of the packet of letters, and then mail after mail came in and no envelopes with the black round writing on it came to that quiet Australian suburb after long tossing on the great deep. Week after week Phyl and Dolly, Weenie or the boys went up the long hill to the Post-office, one after another sometimes to make quite sure a letter had not been overlooked, to worry the postmistress, to “just see if there was one sticking to the back of the pigeon-hole,” or “to please look if there wasn’t a German letter mixed up with the newspapers.”
Silence, silence, week after week, and all their hearts aching miserably for the poor little homesick lad. Silence, silence. He was in Alexandria now, they told themselves, and pictured him happier, for the cousin had a family of boys. The girls read up all they knew about the Nile and about that particular town, but they could not comfort themselves by imagining him interested in the stupendous age of the place; they knew he would compare the Nile with the Hawkesbury, greatly to the detriment of the former. Phyl almost always went to sleep with wet eyes induced by a mental picture of Alf’s solid, lonely little figure standing solitary against the great Pyramid. Silence, silence!
[285]
]CHAPTER XXVII
FINANCE AND FASHION
“‘Two added to one, if that could be done,’
It said, ‘with one’s fingers and thumbs,’