Mrs Payne wrote, hoping that I would at least spend a day with them, if not two or three days; she would be so interested to hear my home news, and Rupert, the incipient novelist, was more than delighted at the idea of meeting me again.
Now, as it happened, and as really does happen in fact as well as in fiction, though people are so fond of saying that coincidences principally exist in story-books, this proposal came just at the right time. When I told my godmother of it, I noticed at first a touch of hesitation in her manner.
“Mrs Payne?” she said. “Not old friends of yours, are they? I don’t remember about them.”
I explained to her when and where we had met, adding that I believed the father was a lawyer of very good standing. Her face cleared.
“Oh yes!” she exclaimed. “I know who they are now, thoroughly good people, a little old-fashioned perhaps. And you think your parents would be quite pleased for you to renew the acquaintance?”
“I’m sure of it,” I said; “but don’t you think it would be enough to go there to luncheon one day? I am so perfectly happy here, I don’t want to go anywhere else.”
“Dear,” was the reply, “I do like to hear you say so. Having you is almost”—and here the tiny shadow that sometimes crept into her eyes was for a moment perceptible—“almost like having a daughter of my own. But as it happens—I know I may be quite frank with you—it would answer rather well for you to go to these good people for a couple of days or so. Say next Friday to the Monday after? Henry and I have a rather special invitation for those days, and though I had not dreamt of mentioning it to you, now that this has turned up, it all seems to fit in, for my husband would like me to go with him to his uncle’s.”
I was of course only too glad to be in no way a difficulty to my hosts, so I wrote at once both to Mrs Payne, suggesting the date named, and to mother, telling her what I had done in the matter. And all came to pass in accordance with our plan. The following Friday found me driving across the park to the rather sombre but stately square where the Paynes had lived for many years.