"Yes," said Mrs. Munt, "he did indeed; and much more that he didn't, so to speak, need to have done—without, all the same, having fallen short of his duty."

"I wish he would tell us things like that," I said. "How are we to know?"

"No," said Tib, "not quite that. I think it seems more for his not telling. But I wish—I wish he'd let us feel that he loves us, and then we would, indeed we would, love him;" and some tears slowly made their way into Tib's blue eyes.

"Well, well, dears, that's the right way to feel, any way. And maybe things will change somehow. It's wonderful how things come round when people really mean right. So keep up heart, and don't be afraid of letting master see that you want to please him, and to love him too."

This talk with the old housekeeper made a great impression on us—so great that it almost put the mystery out of our heads altogether. For a great deal seemed explained by the thought of grandpapa's old troubles, and what these had been in time past we knew quite well. He had lost so many dear to him. Grandmamma, to begin with, had died quite young; then there was the brother Baldwin, killed in India, and the sister Mary, buried at Ansdell Friars. That was sad enough—and then his only son to have died too, leaving us three helpless babies.

"I dare say he'd just as soon have been without us, and have had nobody at all belonging to him," I said to Tib. "It must have been a great nuisance to have us stupid little things sent home, and not even poor mamma to take care of us. Do you remember, Tib, how we used to cry and run back to nurse when he sent for us down to the library to see him? We thought him a sort of an ogre."

A few days after this talk with Mrs. Munt, grandpapa came down to Rosebuds from a Saturday to a Monday. We weren't exactly glad to see him, but what the old housekeeper had said was fresh in our minds, and we were all anxious to do our best to please him. So we made no objection when nurse called us a full hour before he could possibly arrive, "to be made neat against your dear grandpapa comes." Poor old Liddy—she would have thought it her duty to call him our dear grandpapa even if he had been an ogre, I do believe!

Listening for the first rumble of the carriage wheels.
Click to [ENLARGE]

And we had worked ourselves up to being so extra good, that we did not even grumble at the long time we had to sit still doing nothing on the window-seat in the hall, watching, or listening rather, for the first rumble of the carriage wheels as the signal for all running out into the porch to meet him. That part of it was a "plan" of Tib's—everything with her was sure to run into "plans," and with this new idea of pleasing grandpapa, she was constantly casting about in her head what we could do.

"I think seeing us standing together in the porch will touch him, you see, Gussie," she said. "It is a little like some scene I've read of in a story-book—the orphans, you know—oh, where was it?—and the stern guardian, and it quite melts him, and——"