“Long-lost sister Matilda!” repeated Mrs Larrabel.
“This—is—your—long-lost sister Matilda,” rehearsed Mrs Twitter, like one in a dream.
The situation was rendered still more complex by the sudden entrance of Mr Twitter and his friend Crackaby.
“What—what—what’s to do now, Mariar?”
“Sister Matilda!” shouted all three with a gasp.
“Lunatics, every one of ’em,” murmured Crackaby.
It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add that a full explanation ensued when the party became calmer; that Mrs Twitter could not doubt the veracity of Hetty Frog, but suspected her sanity; that Mrs Frog was sent for, and was recognised at once by Mr Twitter as the poor woman who had asked him such wild and unmeaning questions the night on which he had found the baby; and that Mr and Mrs Twitter, Mrs Loper, Mrs Larrabel, and Crackaby came to the unanimous conclusion that they had never heard of such a thing before in the whole course of their united lives—which lives, when united, as some statisticians would take a pride in recording, formed two hundred and forty-three years! Poor Mrs Twitter was as inconsolable at the loss of her baby as Mrs Frog was overjoyed at the recovery of hers. She therefore besought the latter to leave little Mita, alias Matty, with her just for one night longer—only one night—and then she might come for her in the morning, for, you know, it would have been cruel to remove the child from her warm crib at that hour to a cold and comfortless lodging.
Of course Mrs Frog readily consented. If Mrs Frog had known the events that lay in the womb of the next few hours, she would sooner have consented to have had her right-hand cut off than have agreed to that most reasonable request.
But we must not anticipate. A few of our dramatis personae took both an active and an inactive part in the events of these hours. It is therefore imperative that we should indicate how some of them came to be in that region.
About five of the clock in the afternoon of the day in question, Sir Richard Brandon, his daughter and idol Diana, and his young friend Stephen Welland, sat in the dining-room of the West-end mansion concluding an early and rather hasty dinner. That something was pending was indicated by the fact that little Di sat accoutred in her hat and cloak.