'Uncle Marmy!' she repeated, 'that was your grandfather's name. I thought your mother was an only child.'
'Yes,' said Jacinth, 'Uncle Marmaduke is not our real—not our full uncle. He is mamma's half-brother only.'
'Oh,' exclaimed the old lady, 'now I understand.'
'But we love him just as much—quite as much as if he was our whole uncle,' said Frances, eagerly. 'He's perfectly—oh, he's as nice as he can possibly be.'
Lady Myrtle smiled, and gave a little pat to Frances's shining tangle of curly hair.
'Good-bye then, my dears, for to-day,' she said.
But she stood at the gate looking after them till they reached the corner of the lane, when some happy impulse made Jacinth—undemonstrative Jacinth—turn round and kiss her hand to the solitary old figure.
'She's like a sort of a grandmother to us,' said Eugene. 'What a good thing,' with extreme self-complacency, 'I made you go in!—what a good thing I was'—after a great effort—'wursty!'
But Jacinth's face was slightly clouded. She drew Frances a little apart from the others.
'Frances,' she said severely, 'you must have more sense. How could you begin about those girls at school?' Lady Myrtle, if she does notice us, won't want to hear all the chatter and gossip of Miss Scarlett's. And it's such a common sort of thing, the moment you hear a name, to start up and say "Oh, I know somebody called that," and then go on about your somebodies that no one wants to hear anything of.'