She waited for somebody to say something. Peter's face did not look as if he thought the surprise a very beautiful one.
'Beg your pardon, Miss Betty,' he said doubtfully, 'but Mr. Bernard's lady, she'd—she'd be black, I suppose?'
'Black!' exclaimed Betty in horror. 'Oh, dear me, no, Peter! Of course she wouldn't be black. There are English people in the West Indies or my brother wouldn't have been there, and it was an English lady he married; but, poor lady, she died when she'd only been our sister not quite a year. I suppose that was why Bernard never told us afterwards, because of not wanting us to know what we'd missed. It was very, very brave and very unselfish of him, of course, but Angel and I wish he had, because then we could have written and said how sorry we were, and perhaps comforted him a little. And now I'm coming to the most surprising thing of all. My brother had a little boy, and he is seven years old now, and he is in England and he will be here to-night.' Miss Betty hurried out these last pieces of news one on the top of the other, and then stopped and looked at her hearers, who certainly seemed surprised enough to satisfy her.
'Poor little gentleman!' said kind-hearted Peter, ''tis a sad coming to England for him, for sure, and him an orphan and alone in the world, as one may say.'
'No, Peter, one mayn't say anything of the kind,' said Miss Betty, pulling herself up and looking as dignified as she possibly could. 'Of course, he's an orphan, poor dear little boy! but he can't be alone in the world at all when he's got two aunts, and his aunt Angelica and I will take good care he never feels like an orphan, the darling.'
Nancy's eyes opened their very widest. 'But, Miss Betty,' she said, 'I thought aunts were old people.'
'Oh, Nancy!' said Betty, with an air of wisdom; 'you have a very great deal to learn, Nancy, dear. It is not the age that makes the aunt, Nancy, it is the nephew or the niece. And as for being old, Angelica and I aren't so very young. She was sixteen last winter and I am thirteen, and people have done a great deal at thirteen, as you'll learn when you read biography. And, even if we haven't been so very old before, we have to begin now and grow up at once, for we are going to live here and be independent ladies, with our cousin, Mr. Crayshaw, coming down now and then from London to see us, and—and talk over business, and advise us about our money matters, and we shall have Godfrey, our nephew Godfrey, to take care of and educate. Angel says,' she went on after a minute, while the faces of her listeners showed great satisfaction at the arrangements, 'that we must put everything else on one side and bring up our nephew as his father would have wished, to be a proper English gentleman and a credit to his family. She says we can fit ourselves to do any duty that we have got to do, and our duty now is to be good aunts, and we must be that with all our might;' and here the good aunt broke off suddenly as her eye fell for the first time on the baskets which her listeners were holding.
'Did you bring those for us?' she exclaimed. 'Oh, how kind of you! Are those Polly's eggs, Nance? I guessed they were, and the mushrooms are off the common, I know. Whereabouts did you get them, Pete? I must go with you some day very soon, I'm longing——'
And then as if with a sudden recollection the eager little lady pulled herself up, smoothed her crooked kerchief, and shook the rebellious hair out of her eyes, and went on in her most sober tones: 'I don't know, Peter, whether I shall be able to come mushrooming much now. Of course my nephew will take up a good deal of my time, and I'm not sure whether many mushrooms are quite a good thing for children. But eggs will be very nice for his breakfast—a new-laid egg every day, I think, not too hard-boiled. And there's just one more little thing; I hope you won't mind, but I fancy if you could get into the way of calling us Miss Angelica and Miss Elizabeth when our nephew is there it would be a good thing, and make him look up to us more. You won't mind my saying so, will you? And now I think I must go, because Angel—because Miss Angelica will be up; so good-bye, and thank you very much indeed for coming.'
And the next minute Miss Betty was gone, starting off in her usual whirlwind fashion, then pulling herself up and marching along solemnly and with the dignity which became the aunt.