Mr. Truro turned his face away for half a second. I fancy he didn't want us to see how sorry he looked. By this time we had sauntered round to the other side of the lawn, out of sight of the house almost. There was a garden seat near where we stood. Mr. Truro took Tib and me by the hand, and Gerald trotted after.
"Let's sit down," he said. "Now, that's comfortable. Yes, dears, I am a cousin, and I think you'll find me a faithful one. Do tell me 'things.' I won't let you say anything not right of your grandfather; there is no man living I respect more. But perhaps I may help you to understand him better."
"Is he never cross to you?" asked Tib; "at least, not so much cross as that horrid laughy-at-you-way—laughy without being funny or nice, you know."
"Yes, I do know," he answered. "I think Mr. Ansdell is inclined to be that way to everybody a little. I wish you could hear how he makes some of them smart now and then in the House."
"The people who don't pay their bills—the people who make the National Debt, do you mean?" I asked.
"The how much?" asked our new cousin in his turn, opening his eyes very wide.
And when I explained what I meant, about all the talk we had heard about bills, and how Tib had read something about the National Debt, and thought it must mean that, you should have seen how he laughed; not a bit like grandpapa, but just roaring. I know better now, of course. I know that there are different kinds of bills, and that the ones we had heard of being talked about in Parliament are new plans or proposals that the gentlemen there—"members," like grandpapa—want to have made into laws, because they think they would be good laws. I know, too, pretty well—at least a little—about the National Debt, and that somehow it isn't a bad thing, though little debts are very bad things. I don't see how, but I suppose I shall understand when I'm big, that things that are bad when they're little aren't always bad when they're very big.
When Mr. Truro had finished laughing, he began to listen to all we had to tell him. You would hardly believe how much we told him. Indeed, when we thought it over afterwards we could hardly believe it ourselves; to think that here was a strange gentleman we hadn't known an hour, whose name we had never heard in our lives, and that we were talking to him as we had never before talked to anybody. He had such a way of looking as if he really cared to hear. I think it was that that made it so easy to talk to him; and then, of course, his being a cousin made a difference. He wasn't a very near one, but I have noticed that sometimes rather far-off cousins care for you quite as much or more than much nearer ones. And anything in the shape of a cousin was a great deal to us; we had never heard of having any at all.
After we had chattered away for some time, some little remark, I forget what exactly, something about what we did with ourselves all day after lessons were over, seeing that we had no friends or companions, for we had told him about grandpapa's not allowing us to know any neighbours; something of that kind brought us dreadfully near the subject of our discovery. We had already said something, though very little, about the old book with the scored-out name, and Mr. Truro listened eagerly, though it struck me afterwards more than at the time that he had not seemed very surprised.
And when we did not at once answer about how we amused ourselves, he repeated the question. We looked at each other. Then Tib got rather red, and said, quietly,