“Esmeralda!” echoed Sylvia blankly. It seemed for a moment as if Bridgie must be romancing, for the staid English mind refused to believe that one who had at one time appeared actively antagonistic, and at the best had shown nothing warmer than a lofty tolerance, should suddenly become the most thoughtful and generous of friends. Yet there it was, specified in black and white. Esmeralda had originated the kindly plan; she had engaged no second-rate artist, but one to whom her own work had been entrusted, and had given freely of what was even more value to her than money, her time, in order that the gift should arrive at the right moment.
Sylvia flushed with a gratification which was twofold in its nature, for here at last seemed an opening of drawing near in heart to that beautiful, baffling personality, who was Jack’s sister, and might some day—oh, wonderful thought!—be her own also. It would be a triumph, indeed, if in these days of waiting she could overcome the last lingering prejudice, and feel that there would be no dissentient note when at last the great secret was revealed.
Aunt and niece hung together over the case with its precious contents, the one exhausting herself in expressions of gratitude and appreciation, the other equally delighted, but quite unable to resist looking the gift horse in the mouth, and speculating in awed tones concerning the enormous cost of ivory miniatures. That jarred, but on the whole the evening passed more pleasantly than Sylvia could have believed possible, the unexpected excitement breaking the thread of that painful cross-examination, and carrying the old lady’s thoughts back to the far-off days when she and her brother had been sworn friends and playmates.
“Tell me what you used to do, auntie! It must be so nice to have someone to play with. Do tell me some of your escapades!” she pleaded wistfully, and Miss Munns shook her head, and assumed a great air of disapproval, though it was easy to see that she cherished a secret pride in the remembrance of her own audacities.
“I am afraid we were very naughty, thankless children. One day, I remember, Teddy, as we used to call him, had been very rightly punished for disobedience, and he confided in me that he intended to run away, and go to sea, as a cabin-boy. We always did everything together in those days, so of course nothing must suit me but I must go too. We got up early the next morning, and ran out into the garden, where we were allowed to play before breakfast, and then slipped out of the side door, to walk to Portsmouth.
“Portsmouth was eighteen miles away, and I was only six, and before we had walked two miles, I was crying with fatigue and hunger. Teddy had brought some bread-and-butter, so we sat under a hedge to eat it, and he told me we must be very nearly there. Just then up came a tramp, and stopped to ask why we were crying, and what we were doing out there in the road at that hour in the morning. ‘We are going to Portsmouth to be cabin-boys,’ we told him, and I can remember to this day how he laughed. ‘If you are going to be cabin-boys, you won’t want those clothes,’ he said. ‘You had better take them off, and give them to me, to change for proper sailor things.’
“We thought that a splendid idea, so he took Teddy’s suit, and my frock and hat, and left us shivering under the hedge waiting his return. Of course he never came, and an hour or two later, my father came driving along to look for us, and we were taken home, and punished as we deserved. That is to say, Teddy was whipped, and I was only put to bed, for he insisted that the idea was his, and that he alone was to blame.”
“Nice little Teddy!” murmured Sylvia fondly, looking down at the pictured face, which, despite grey hair and wrinkles, had still the gallant air of the little boy who shielded his sister from blame.
Having once started, Miss Munns told one story after another of her childhood’s days; of the lessons which brother and sister used to learn together—a whole page of Mangnall’s Questions at a time, and of the dire and terrible conspiracy, by which they learnt alternate answers, easily persuading the docile governess to take the right “turns.” Thus Teddy, when asked “What is starch?” could reply with prompt accuracy, while remaining in dense ignorance of the date when printing was introduced into England, concerning which his small sister was so well informed.
Sylvia was told of the books which were read and re-read, until the pages came loose from their bindings; of the thrilling adventures of one Masterman Ready, whose stockade, being besieged by savages, it became an immediate necessity to guard the gate at the head of the nursery stairs, and to hurl a succession of broken toys at the innocent nurse, as she forced an entry; of a misguided and stubborn “Rosamond” who expended her savings on a large purple vase from a chemist’s window, and found to her chagrin that when the water was poured away, it was only a plain glass bottle; and of a certain “Leila,” who sojourned on a desert island in the utmost comfort and luxury, being possessed of a clever father who found all that he needed on the trees in the forest.