“You must come at once,” he said, putting on an authoritative manner; “then you can tell us all your news, and we will tell you all ours. There, put your arm in mine, and Florence shall go the other side to see you don’t escape.”
“He is just the same. He makes me think of his dear father,” she said, as she walked between them; “and of that happy day at Brighton, years and years ago now, when I met you both on the pier. Do you remember, my dear ones?”
“Of course we do!” said Walter; “and how victoriously you carried us off then, just as we are carrying you off now.”
“Oh, he’s just the same,” the old lady repeated.
“Here’s a four-wheeler,” he said, when they reached the Bayswater Road. “This is quite an adventure; only,” he added gently, “you don’t look up to much.”
“I shall be better soon,” she said, and dropped into silence again. She looked, almost vacantly, out of the cab window as they went along, and they were afraid to ask her questions, for, instinctively, they felt that things had not gone well with her. Presently she turned to Florence. “Did you say the children were at home, my love?”
“Yes, dear.” The old lady looked out again at the green trees in the Park, and almost furtively at the shops in Oxford Street. Then she turned to Florence.
“My love,” she said, “I must take those dear children a little present. Would you permit the cabman to stop at a sweetmeat-shop? We shall reach one in a moment.”
“Oh, please don’t trouble about them, dear Aunt Anne.”
“I shouldn’t like them to think I had forgotten them, my love,” she pleaded.