After dinner we went up to the littlest drawing-room—the one mother wanted for so long to refurnish prettily. There was a fire, for it was only March, and mums sat in one of the big old armchairs close to it, and Anne and Hebe beside her. And father drew a chair to mums' writing-table, and wrote out several advertisements for the next morning's papers, which he sent off to the offices that very evening. Some were in the next morning, and some weren't; but it didn't much matter, for none of them did any good. Before he sent them he inquired of all the servants if they had looked everywhere he had told them to.
'There is just a chance of daylight showing it in some corner,' he said, when he had done all this, and come to sit down beside mums.
'I don't know that,' she said. 'This house is so dark by day. But, after all, the chance of its being here is very small.'
'Yes,' father said, 'I have more hope in the advertisements.'
'And,' mother went on, her voice sounding almost as if she was going to cry—I believe she kept it back a good deal for Anne's sake—'if—if they don't bring anything, what about telling your father, Alan?' 'Alan' is fathers name—'Alan Joachim,' and mine is 'Joachim Gerald.'
Father considered.
'We must wait a little. It will be a good while before I quite give up hopes of it. And there's no use in spoiling gran's time in Ireland; for there's no doubt the news would spoil it—he's the sort of person to fret tremendously over a thing of the kind.'
'I'm afraid he is,' said mother, and she sighed deeply.
But hearing a faint sob from Anne, father gave mother a tiny sign, and then he asked us if we'd like him to read aloud a little sort of fairy story he'd been writing for some magazine. Of course we all said 'Yes': we're very proud if ever he offers to read us anything, even though we mayn't understand it very well; but this time we did understand it—Anne best of all, I expect. And when he had finished, it was time for us to go to bed.
We had had, as I told you, rather an extra nice evening after all, and father had managed to make poor mums more cheerful and hopeful.