Rachel disappeared through one door, Kitty and Phil through another, and Mrs. Lovel and the two old ladies of Avonsyde were left to make acquaintance with one another.
“Come into the drawing-room,” said Miss Griselda; “your little boy and the children will get on best alone. He is a muscular-looking little fellow, although singularly pale. Where did you say he was born—in Mexico?”
“In Mexico,” replied Mrs. Lovel, repressing a sigh. “The true Mexican lads are about the strongest in the world; but he of course is really of English parentage, although his father and his grandfather never saw England. Yes, Phil was born in Mexico, but shortly afterward we moved into the American States, and before my husband died we had emigrated to Australia. Phil is a strong boy and has had the advantage of travel and constant change—that is why he is so wiry. The hot country in which he was born accounts for his pallor, but he is remarkably strong.”
Mrs. Lovel’s words came out quickly and with the nervousness of one who was not very sure of a carefully prepared lesson. Suspicious people would have doubted this anxious-looking woman on the spot, but neither Miss Griselda nor Miss Katharine was at all of a suspicious turn of mind. Miss Griselda said:
“You have traveled over a great part of the habitable globe and we have remained—I and my sister and our immediate ancestors before us—in the privacy and shelter of Avonsyde. To come here will be a great change for you and your boy.”
“A great rest—a great delight!” replied Mrs. Lovel, clasping her hands ecstatically. “Oh, dear Miss Lovel, you don’t know what it is to weary for a home as I have wearied.”
Her words were genuine and tears stood in her pale blue eyes.
Miss Griselda considered tears and raptures rather undignified; but Miss Katharine, who was very sympathetic, looked at the widow with new interest.
“It is wonderfully interesting to feel that your little boy belongs to us,” she said. “He seems a nice little fellow, very naïve and fresh. Won’t you sit in this comfortable chair? You can get such a nice view of the forest from here. And do you take cream and sugar in your tea?”
“A very little cream and no sugar,” replied Mrs. Lovel as she leaned back luxuriously in the proffered chair. “What a lovely view! And what a quaint, beautiful room. I remember my husband telling me that Avonsyde belonged to his family for nearly eight hundred years, and that the house was almost as old as the property. Is this room really eight hundred years old? It looks wonderfully quaint.”