"We must have a long afternoon to ourselves, nurse," we said. "It's horrid to be cooped up in the house all day."
"Well, I'm sure, my dears, I'm as sorry as you can be when it has to be so," said nurse. "But it's very wet everywhere still to-day. It did pour so yesterday. You must be sure to take your goloshes, and to come in at once if you feel chilly or shivery. I wouldn't for anything have you take cold."
"We never do, nurse," Tib said. "You must allow that we don't give you much trouble about our being ill."
"As if I'd grudge any trouble, my dear," said Liddy—she was very matter of fact. "But it's true you've given no trouble of any kind since you've been here, and so I shall tell your dear grandpapa—and so, I'm sure, will Mrs. Munt. She thinks there never were such children. But do be careful now, dears, not to catch cold just as your dear grandpapa's coming?"
"Grandpapa coming! You never told us," we exclaimed. "When is he coming?"
"To-morrow; and Mr. Truro too. At least, Mrs. Munt's sure it's him, though Mr. Ansdell only says to prepare the same rooms as last time. I meant to tell you when we began speaking—Mrs. Munt just got the letter this morning."
"What a good thing he's not coming to-day," we said to ourselves. "Nurse would never have let us out at all, or else we would have had to come in early, and she said she couldn't come early. I wonder, Tib," I went on, "I wonder if somehow her wanting us so much to-day, and what she has said, has anything to do with grandpapa's coming?"
"How could she know he was coming before we knew it ourselves, even? Gussie, it's not me that's too fanciful nowadays," said Tib. "Of course, on our side, knowing he was coming might have made us say perhaps it would be the last time. You know we've promised her and ourselves to tell Mr. Truro all about her, and then he or we must tell grandpapa, and who knows what he'll say? It's to be hoped he's not so busy and worried as he was when he was here before."
But the thought that it might be the last time we should see our pretty princess—that grandpapa might even forbid our ever going to our palace, as we still called it, at all, made us rather sad and subdued, and it was not as merrily as usual that we ran through the tangle to the door in the wall.
"Be quick, Gerald," I said, when he had got the key in the lock, and was turning it—he always counted it his business; "what are you pulling at?"