"Why, we never even heard of Rosebuds till a few days before we came here," I told her.
Her face grew sad at this, and I was sorry I had said it.
"Grandpapa is very funny," I went on, thinking, perhaps, we might get round to the subject of the "young ladies" and the scored-out name, which we couldn't help connecting together; "he never tells us anything. I don't believe he'd have ever told us we'd had a papa and mamma if nurse hadn't been our mamma's nurse, and so could tell us all about her."
"Your grandpapa's had a deal of trouble, my dears," said Mrs. Munt. "And there's some as trouble softens and makes more loving to all about them and some as it hardens, or seems to harden, leastways to shut them up in themselves. And I think it's no harm of me to tell you, now I see what sensible children you are, that it's been that way with your grandpapa. It's not really hardened him, for you know he has not got selfish or unmindful of others. He is very good to you?" and poor Mrs. Munt made the question anxiously, as if half afraid of what we might answer.
"Nurse says he's very good to us," said Tib, slowly. "He gives us everything we have."
"But it isn't our fault that we are his grandchildren," I said, rather bitterly. "We didn't ask to be it. And he has plenty of money—what could he do with it if he hadn't us?"
"Gussie," said Tib, reproachfully. But old Mrs. Munt only looked distressed, not vexed.
"He does love you, my dears: I feel sure of it," she said. "Only he's got out of the way of showing it—that's what's wrong. If you had your grandmamma now, or——" and then she stopped. "A lady—a woman in the family makes all so different. But try, my lovies, to believe that he does love you. It is true, as Miss Gussie says—for I'd never be one to say to children what their own sense feels is nonsense—that it would be very wrong of your grandpapa not to give you all you should have. You're his own flesh and blood, for sure. Still, he might have done it in a different way—he might have sent you to some sort of school, or to some lady who'd have taken care of you all, and him have no trouble about it. No one would have thought it unnatural if he'd done that way, instead of taking up house again in London, when he'd got quite out of the way of it, and settling all so that he should have you always near him."
We both looked surprised.
"Did he do that?" we said.