Papa looked very grave, but he held out his other hand to me, and I was glad of that.
"Tell me all about it," he said; and then we told him everything—all about how in our real hearts we had known, or almost known, where Bruno came from, but how we had tried to pretend to ourselves—separately, I mean; Persis to herself and me to myself—that we didn't know, so that we wouldn't even say it to each other, and how it did seem now as if this had come for a punishment.
Papa was very kind, so kind that we went on to tell him how great the temptation had been, how dreadfully we had longed for a dog, and how it had seemed that our only chance of ever having one would be one coming of itself, like Bruno had done.
"Why did you not tell mamma or me how very, very much you wished for one?" asked papa. "It would have been better than bottling it up so between yourselves. You have made yourselves think you wished for one even more than you really did."
But we couldn't quite agree with that.
"We did speak of it sometimes," we said, "but we knew mamma didn't want to have a dog—not in London. And——" but there we stopped. We really didn't quite know why we hadn't said more about it. I think children often keep their fancies to themselves without quite knowing why. But we didn't think it had been a fancy only, after all. "We couldn't have loved him more," we said. "The real of it turned out quite as nice as the fancy."
Then papa spoke to us very seriously. I daresay you can tell of yourselves—all of you who have nice fathers and mothers—the sort of way he spoke. About being quite, quite true and honest even in thinkings, and about how dangerous it is to try to deceive ourselves, for that the self we try to deceive is the best part of us, the voice of God in our hearts, and it can never really be deceived, only, if we don't listen to it, after a while we can't hear it any more.
"Yes," said Persis, "I did know I was shamming to my good self all the time."
Then she cried a little more—and I did too. And papa kissed us, and we went on home, rather sadly of course, but still feeling, in a good way, glad too. And papa told it all to mamma, so that she kissed us very nicely when she said good-night, and called us her poor darlings.
You may think that is the end. But it isn't. The end is lovely.