She was right; on a border sheltered by the wall of the cottage were great masses of fern, still green and luxuriant, and here and there among them clumps, brilliantly blue, of the tender, loving forget-me-not.
“It’s just like that bunch of it we found on our terrace,” said Mavis, joyfully. “I really could believe you had brought a root of it and planted it there for us, Winfried. I never saw such beauties.”
“Gran loves it,” was all the boy said. Then he led them round to the front of the house, and opened the door for them to enter.
Inside the cottage all was very plain, but very, very neat and clean. In an old-fashioned large wooden arm-chair by the fire sat old Adam. He looked very old, older than the children had expected, and a kind of awe came over them. His hair was white, but scarcely whiter than his face, his hands were unusually delicate and refined, though gnarled and knotted as are those of aged people. He looked up with a smile, for his sight was still good, as his visitors came in.
“You will forgive my not standing up, my dear little ladies,” he said. “You see I am very old. It is good of you to come to see me. I have often seen you, oftener than you knew, since you were very tiny things.”
“Have you lived here a long time, then?” asked Ruby.
“It would seem a long time to you, though not to me,” he said with a smile. “And long ago before that, I knew your grandmother and the lady who takes care of you. When I was a young man, and a middle-aged man too for that matter, my home was where theirs was. So I remember your mother when she was as little as you.”
“Oh, how nice,” exclaimed Mavis. “Was our mother like us, Mr Adam?”
“You may be very like her if you wish,” he said kindly.
But their attention was already distracted. On a small table, close beside the old man’s chair, in what at first sight looked like a delicate china cup, but was in reality a large and lovely shell, was a posy, freshly gathered apparently, of the same beautiful forget-me-nots.