Granny has often said she never had so attentive a pupil, and it was in talking with him—for 'conversation' was a very important part of her teaching—that she got to know so much of Gerard, and he so much of her.
She used to tell him stories of her own boys, Paul—Paul was papa—and Guy, in French, and he had to answer questions about the stories to show that he had understood her. And in these stories the name of Cosmo Vandeleur came to be mentioned.
The first time or so he heard it I don't think Jerry noticed it. But one day it struck him just as it had struck grandmamma that first day—the birthday-tea day—at Moor Court.
'Vandeleur,' said Jerry—it was one day when he had come over for his lesson, and as it was raining and I could not go out, I was sitting in the window making a cloak or something for my doll. 'Vandeleur,' he repeated. 'I wonder, Mrs. Wingfield, if your nephew is any relation to some boys at my school. They are great chums of mine—they were to have come home with me for the summer holidays'—it was the Christmas holidays now,—'but their relations had settled something else for them and wouldn't let them come. I think their relations must be rather horrid.'
'I remember Sharley—I think it was Sharley—speaking of them,' said grandmamma. 'They are orphans, are they not?'
'Yes,' said Gerard. 'They've got guardians—one of them is quite an old woman. Her name is Lady Bridget Woodstone. They don't care very much for her. I think she must be very crabbed.'
'I do not think they can be related to my nephew,' said grandmamma. 'I never heard of any orphan boys in his family, and I never heard of Lady Bridget Woodstone. But Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur is only my nephew, because his mother was my husband's sister—so of course he may have relations I know nothing of. He always seemed to me very near when he was a boy, because he was so often with us.'
She sighed a little as she finished speaking. Thinking of Mr. Vandeleur made her sad. It did seem so strange that he had never written all these years.
And Jerry was very quick as well as thoughtful. He saw that for some reason the mention of the name made her sad, so he said no more about the Vandeleur boys. Long afterwards he told us that when he went back to school he did ask Harry and Lindsay Vandeleur if they had any relation called Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur, but at that time they told him they did not know. They were quite under the care of old Lady Bridget, and she was not a bit like granny. She was the sort of old lady who treats children as if they had no sense at all; she never told the boys anything about themselves or their family, and when they spent the holidays with her, she always had a tutor for them—the strictest she could find, so that they almost liked better to stay on at school.
The three years I have been writing about must have passed quickly to grandmamma. They were so peaceful, and after we got to know the Nestors, much less lonely. And grandmamma says that it is quite wonderful how fast time goes once one begins to grow old. She does not seem to mind it. She is so very good—I cannot help saying this, for my own story would not be true if I did not keep saying how good she is. But I must take care not to let her see the places where I say it. She loves me as dearly as she can, I know—and others beside me. But still I try not to be selfish and to remember that when the dreadful—dreadful-for-me—day comes that she must leave me, it will only for her be the going where she must often, often have longed to be—the country 'across the river,' where her very dearest have been watching for her for so long.