"In that case," she replied, "I'll go." She took Janie with her.
It was her first real holiday, for she had nothing to do but bask in the sunshine among the flowers and be petted by everybody, especially by Mr. and Mrs. Edisbury, who managed the hotel at which she stayed. What a time of joy it was! "From the first hour we arrived in fear and trembling," she said, "to the hour we left with a heart full to overflowing, our visit was a delicious vision of every kind of loveliness."
She was not long in the hotel before she heard that Mrs. Edisbury had a little lame son, nine years old, named Ratcliffe, who could only walk about on crutches. She could hardly walk herself then, and her tender heart was filled with love and pity and sympathy for the boy. "Oh," she said, "I must see him." She found him in the nursery, a very bright and eager child, and at once they became fast friends. For hours he would sit by her side, his great grey-blue eyes fixed on her face, while she told him thrilling stories of her adventures in wild Africa.
Before they parted they had a quiet talk and made a secret bargain. Each was to do something every day only known to themselves; nobody was to be told—not even Ratcliffe's own mother. His face was glowing when they were planning it, and he felt it was splendid to have a secret which one would think about from day to day, but which no other person would know of. His mother and aunt heard that it had been made, and sometimes they teased him to tell, but he just smiled, and nothing ever made him open his lips and speak of it. We shall learn by and by what it was.
On board the steamer going back Ma wrote a long letter to Ratcliffe:
You were in the land of Nod long before our boat came in, so neither Janie nor myself could go to say good-bye to you. But what do you think your dear daddy did? Just came away with us in the middle of the night, in the dark and the cold, and took us to the boat with all our luggage and stuff, and in the dark found our way for us to the big steamer, and then up the long stair at the ship's side, and brought us into the cabin where I am now sitting, and which has to be our home for the next ten days or so. And your dear mother waited up to say good-bye, and so did your dear aunty, and they sent us off laden with apples and flowers, and, better still, with warm loving wishes and hopes that we should meet again. My heart was glad and thankful, but it was very sore and sorry, and I am afraid I cried a wee bit when Mr. Edisbury went away out into the dark and left us. How happy your dear parents and your auntie made us! and how good it was to meet you. It will ever live as a picture in my heart and memory the times we spent with you, and it was very good for Janie to know you....
We have a crowd on board, and to-day we had a birthday cake to tea, because it is a lady's birthday. As no one ever asks a lady how old she is—you remember us talking about that—well, they put 21 on the icing of the cake, but she is an old lady, and they made her funny presents, a little dolly, and a china pug dog with a tail that keeps wagging after you have touched it, and some beads. It was such fun. There is so little to do on board that every one gets wearied, and wants a bit of fun to pass the hours away....
And now, dear little friend, good-bye. Be good and brave, and hurry putting your pennies in the bank so that you can come to see us and stay a long time. Janie sends her compliments to you and to all, and says, "Do not forget us." So say I.
Joyful days in Ratcliffe's life were these when letters arrived from Ma, "bang, bang from the wilds," as she said. In all she spoke of the mysterious secret. "Now, sonny," she would say, "do you remember our little secret treaty? I do, and keep it. There is a telephone and a telegraph, secret, wireless, swift, which never fails, and it carries to Canary via the Kingdom of God." Or this, "Are you remembering our old secret? Dear old sweet-heart, so am I, and I get surer and surer than ever for the Best. Keep on!"
Sometimes Ratcliffe wrote in reply, sometimes his mother or auntie, but always there was a message to say that "the secret was being kept."
Ratcliffe liked to hear about the children and their doings and about the teeming life of the forest, "cunning things among insects and beautiful flies and butterflies and small creatures among the bushes glistening like fine stones or flowers," but best of all he loved the snake stories like this: