“So we’ll leave the Irish and Scotch uncles and aunts behind and go to North Malvern just by ourselves. It was there that your mother concluded that she would marry me, and I rather like the place.”
“Mother loves it, too; she talks to me about it when she puts me to bed.” (Francie again.)
“No doubt; but you’ll find your mother’s heart scattered all over the Continent of Europe. One bit will be clinging to a pink thorn in England; another will be in the Highlands somewhere,—wherever the heather’s in bloom; another will be hanging on the Irish gorse bushes where they are yellowest; and another will be hidden under the seat of a Venetian gondola.”
“Don’t listen to Daddy’s nonsense, children! He thinks mother throws her heart about recklessly while he loves only one thing at a time.”
“Four things!” expostulated Himself, gallantly viewing our little group at large.
“Strictly speaking, we are not four things, we are only four parts of one thing;—counting you in, and I really suppose you ought to be counted in, we are five parts of one thing.”
“Shall we come home again from the other countries?” asked Billy.
“Of course, sonny! The little Beresfords must come back and grow up with their own country.”
“Am I a little Beresford, mother?” asked Francie, looking wistfully at her brother as belonging to the superior sex and the eldest besides.
“Certainly.”