My New Home

by Mrs. Molesworth

First of all, how do you think Cousin Cosmo, as I was told to call him, had come to write again after all those years of silence? What had put it into his head?

The explanation is rather curious. It all came from Gerard Nestor's being at Moor Court that Easter, and feeling so sorry for grandmamma and so sure that she was in trouble.

I have told, as we knew afterwards, that he had written to his people, but that grandmamma's way of answering made them think, and hope, that he had fancied more than was really the matter, and besides it was difficult for the Nestors, who were not relations, to do anything to help grandmamma, unless she had in some way given them her confidence. At that time they were hoping to come home the following spring, and then, probably, Mrs. Nestor would have found out more.

But when Gerard first went back to school his head was full of it. He had not been told anything, it was only his own suspicions, so there was no harm in his speaking of it, as he did, though quite privately, to his great friend, Harry Vandeleur.

And Harry gave him some confidences in return. Lady Bridget Woodstone, the old lady who was guardian to him and his brother, had lately died—the boys had spent their last holidays at school, but a new guardian had now appeared on the scene. This was a cousin of theirs whom, till then, they had never heard of, and this cousin was no other than grandmamma's nephew, Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur.

Gerard quite started when he heard the name, which he remembered quite well. Harry said that Mr. Cosmo Vandeleur was grave and quiet, he and Lindsay felt rather afraid of him, but they would know better what sort of person he was when they had spent the holidays with him.

'We are to go to his house, or at least to a house he has got in Devon, near the sea-side, next August,' he told Gerard, and he promised that he would ask his guardian if he had any relation called Mrs. Wingfield, and if he found it was the same, he would tell him what Gerard had said, and how all these years she had been hoping to hear from him. For granny had told Gerard almost as much as she had told me of how strange it was that 'Cosmo' never wrote.

Well now you—by 'you' of course I mean whoever reads this story, if ever any one does—you begin to see how it came about. Harry Vandeleur did tell his guardian about us, or about grandmamma, and found out that she was his aunt. Mr. Vandeleur was very much startled, Harry said, to hear about how very differently she was living now, and he wrote down the address and told Harry he would make further enquiries.

That was all Harry knew, for Mr. Vandeleur was very reserved, and Harry and Lindsay did not feel as if they knew him any better after the holidays than before. Mrs. Vandeleur was very ill, though they thought she would have liked to be kind; they were always being told not to make a noise, and so they stayed out-of-doors as much as they could. It was rather dull (very dull, I should think), and they hoped they would not spend their next holidays there; they would almost rather stay at school.

It was August or September when Mr. Vandeleur heard about grandmamma. He did not at once write to her; he made enquiries of the lawyer who had for many years managed, grandpapa's and papa's affairs, and he found it was only too true, that granny was very badly off. But even then he did not write immediately, for Mrs. Vandeleur got worse and for a little while they were afraid she was going to die.