"Are they really!" Mollie exclaimed. "Did that thrush's ever-so-great-grandfather sing in the Garden of Eden?"
Aunt Mary only answered with a smile, and Mollie listened again to the thrush, her thoughts wandering back to the times of forty years ago. Quite a little time, she mused. No wonder they were so little different, considering all things, from our own. She had thought that the children of those days must be frightfully dull, and terribly strictly kept; but on the whole they were, in some ways, less dull—or more exciting—and certainly had more liberty, than the children of to-day. Perhaps, however, that was Australia, where there was so much more room than there was in England. She wondered how Dick and Jerry were getting on to-day, and wished for the hundredth time that she could see them and talk things over. They had each other to talk to, but she had no one.
"Have you any diamonds, Aunt Mary?" she asked presently. "I should like to see some diamonds; and rubies and emeralds and topazes and opals and pearls and amethysts and sapphires, and all the precious stones you've got."
"Bless my soul, Mollie! Do you think I am the Queen of Sheba!" Aunt Mary exclaimed. "Grannie has some old-fashioned jewellery locked away in a drawer, but the family diamonds are nothing to go to law about. The only diamond I possess," she went on, "is a green diamond in a ring that someone gave me long, long ago. Long ago," she repeated with a sigh, letting her work drop into her lap and gazing at something that Mollie could not see, for it was the distant past.
Mollie gave a violent start. A green diamond! In a ring! Long, long ago. How very extraordinary! She dared not ask any questions, but she examined her aunt with new and critical interest, from the shining coils of smooth brown hair to the slim ankles and neat buckled shoes. No, she decided, that hair could never have been red and ringletty; besides, Grizzel's eyes were blue and round like a kitten's, while Aunt Mary's were dark brown and long-shaped. Very pretty eyes, Mollie suddenly discovered. Also, Aunt Mary was too young. Forty years ago Grizzel was eight or nine years old, which would make her nearly fifty now. Mollie paused for a moment to picture to herself a fifty-year-old Grizzel, but, failing utterly in the attempt, she continued her meditations on her aunt. Aunt Mary was certainly a considerable distance from that venerable age. Mollie wondered again why she had never married, and who had given her that ring. She sighed impatiently. She wished that she was not bound down by that promise; but she was, hard and fast. It would be better not to think about the green diamond just now. When she got back to forty years ago she would keep her eyes open; it was not at all unlikely, considering all things, that Aunt Mary had had an Australian lover, and it might be possible to do a kind act somehow or other. What the effect would be if 1920 meddled about with the affairs of 1880 Mollie had ceased worrying over. It was altogether too puzzling.
Aunt Mary remained a little absent-minded all the morning, and when the time came for Mollie to go to sleep that afternoon she could hear a new tone in Aunt Mary's voice when she began to sing:
"O bay of Dublin! my heart you're troublin',
Your beauty haunts me like a fevered dream,
Like frozen fountains that the sun sets bubblin
My heart's blood warms when I but hear your name;
And never till this life pulse ceases,
My earliest thought you'll cease to be;
Oh! there's no one here knows how fair that place is,
And no one cares how dear it is to me!"
"If Aunt Mary goes on like this, Prue will certainly find me howling my eyes out," Mollie said to herself. "Talk of might-have-beens and never-will-bes! Grandpapa should hear his own daughter singing! Why did I go and mention green diamonds to her!" She shut her eyes tight to keep the tears from falling. The plaintive tune went on, and when a small soft hand crept into her own her cheeks were wet. She kept her eyes closed and held tight to the little hand!
* * * * *
She was standing in a wide, brick-floored veranda with a steeply sloping roof. The open sides were wreathed with morning-glories, their deep-blue petals wide-spreading to the early sun. Painted tubs, full of scarlet and purple fuchsias, stood in a row beside the railing; coco-nut matting, rough and brown, lay in strips across the red brick floor, and at either end of the veranda stood a deal table. One was covered with books, toys, and work-baskets. At the other sat Bridget, shelling peas. She was singing: