Mrs Garnett lay back in her chair with the contented air of a raconteuse who has deftly led up to a dénouement, and her audience gasped in mingled surprise and curiosity.
“How thrilling! How weird!”
“What an extraordinary thing! Go on! Go on! And what happened next?”
Mrs Garnett chuckled contentedly.
“I met your father, married him, and lived happily ever after! As for Mr Dalrymple, I never met him again nor heard his name mentioned. The sequel is not at all exciting, but it was certainly an extraordinary coincidence, and caused me much agitation at the time. I have timed myself very well—my cone has just burned out. Who’s turn comes next?”
There followed a somewhat lengthened pause while every one nudged a next-door neighbour, and disdained responsibility on his own account. Then Mr Vernon stepped into the breach.
“I heard a curious thing the other day. A friend of mine was taken suddenly ill on a hillside in Switzerland, was carried into a chalet and most kindly tended by the good woman. When, at the end of several hours, he was well enough to leave, he wished to make her a present of money. She refused to take it, but said that she had a daughter in service in England, and that it would be a real pleasure to her, if, upon his return, my friend would write to the girl telling her of his visit to the old home. He asked for the address, and was told, ‘Mary Smith, care of Mr Spencer, The Towers, Chestone.’ He read it, looked the old woman in the face and said, ‘I am Mr Spencer! I live at The Towers, Chestone; and my children’s nurse is called Mary Smith!’ There! I can vouch for the absolute truth of that coincidence, and I think you will find it hard to beat.”
“And what did he say to the nurse?” asked literal Clemence, to the delight of her brothers and sisters, whose imaginary dialogues between master and maid filled the next few minutes with amusement.
Dan’s friend hailed from Oxford, and gave a highly coloured account of a practical joke in several stages, which he had played on an irritating acquaintance. The elder members of the party listened with awe, if without approval, but Tim showed repeated signs of restlessness, and in a final outburst corrected the narrator on an all-important point.
“That’s the way they had it in Britain’s Boys!” he declared, whereupon the Oxford man hid his head under an antimacassar, and exclaimed tragically that all was discovered! “Now it’s Darsie’s turn! Tell us a story, Darsie—an adventure, your own adventure when you went out in that punt, and the mill began working—”