“Mummy,” cried Barby, wriggling along till she stood on the broad window-ledge under Polly’s arm.
“Oh, you dear!” exclaimed Polly, clasping her closely, and turning a happy face. “Barby, do you know that dear Grandpapa and Aunt Phronsie and Uncle Joel are probably safe on the other side now. Do you know it, Barbara?”
“You called her Barbara,” said Elyot from the floor, and relinquishing the charms of a castle ready to receive its final tower, to look over at them.
“I know it,” said Polly happily. “When everything is so beautiful, Elyot, I must call my little girl by her own true name—her papa’s dear mamma’s name. O Barbara, Barbara!” exclaimed Polly with a final kiss.
“And when she’s bad, you call her Barbara,” said Elyot thoughtfully.
“And that is to make my little girl grow up good and beautiful like her dear grandmamma,” said Polly. “Children, you don’t know how beautiful your papa’s mamma was; everybody who ever saw her says so.”
“She’s down-stairs in the drawing-room,” said Elyot, as if stating a wholly new fact for the first time; “and when I go in, I run up and kiss her dress, and say, ‘How do you do, grandmamma,’ and she smiles at me.”
“And I say, ‘Boo, grandmamma!’” laughed Barby confidentially.
“Well, if the picture is so beautiful,” said Polly, “you must remember that dear grandmamma was ever so much more beautiful herself. And she was good and lovely all through, dears.”
“Here comes a man to our house,” cried Barby, leaning over Polly’s arms to look out of the window.