Gwen considered again. Then it flashed across her mind that the disclosure of the relationship of his two Grannies could have no distressing effect on Dave. Time and Change and Death are only names, to a chick not eight years old, and nothing need be told of the means by which the sisters' lives had been cut apart. As for Dolly, she would either weep or laugh at a piece of news, according to the suggestions of her informant. Passionless narrative would leave her unaffected either way. Told as good news, this would be accepted as good, and it would be a pleasure to tell it to those babies.
"I'll tell them myself," said she. "Don't you come up. Is Mrs. Burr there?" No—Mrs. Burr was at Mrs. Ragstroar's, attending to a little job for her. Gwen vanished up the stairs, and her welcome was audible below.
She did not mince matters, and the two young folks were soon crowing with delight at her statement, made with equanimity, that she knew that Granny Marrowbone was really old Mrs. Picture's sister. She saw no reason for making the announcement thrilling. It was enough to say that each of them had been told wicked lies about the other, and been deceived by bad people, such as there was every reason to hope were not to be found in Sapps Court, or the neighbourhood. "And each of them," she added, "thought the other was dead and buried, a long time ago!" Inexplicably, she felt it easier to say dead and buried, than merely dead.
Dolly, having been recently in collision with Time, saw her way to profitable comparison. "A long, long, long time, like my birfday!" she said, suggestively but unstructurally.
"Heaps longer," said Gwen. "Heaps and heaps!" Dolly was impressed, almost cowed. She could not be even with these æons and eras and epochs, at her time of life.
Dave burst into a shout of unrestrained glee at the discovery that his London and country Grannies were sisters. "Oy shall wroyte to say me and Dolly are glad. Ever such long letters to bofe." A moment later his face had clouded over. "Oy say!" said he, "will they be glad or sorry?"
"Glad," said Gwen venturesomely. "Why should they be sorry? You must write them very, very long letters." The mine would be sprung, she thought, before even a short letter was finished. But it was as well to be on the safe side.
Dave was feeling the germination in his mind of hitherto unexperienced thoughts about Death and Time, and he remained speechless. He shook his head with closed lips and puzzled blue eyes fixed on his questioner. She saw a little way into his mind as he looked up at her, and pinched his cheek slightly, for sympathy, with the hand that was round his neck, but said nothing. Children are so funny!
"I fink," said Dolly, "old Mrs. Spicture shall bring old Granny Marrowbone back wiv her when she comes back and sets in her harm-chair wiv scushions, and Mrs. Burr cuts the reel cake, wiv splums, in sloyces, in big sloyces and little sloyces, and Mrs. Burr pawses milluck in my little jug, and Mrs. Burr pawses tea in my little pot—ass, hot tea!—and ven Doyvy shall cally round the scups and sources, but me to paw it out"—this clause was merely to assert the supremacy of Woman in household matters—"and ven all ve persons to help veirself to shoogy.... etc., etc. Which might have run on musically for ever, but that a difficulty arose about the names of the guests and their entertainer. It was most unfortunate that the latter should have been rechristened lately after one of the former. Her owner interpreted her to express readiness to accept another name, and that of Gweng was selected, as a compliment to the visitor.
Then it really became time for that young lady to depart. Think of that doctor's pill-box waiting all this while round the corner! So she ended what she did not suspect was her last look at old Mrs. Picture's apartment, with the fire's last spasmodic flicker helping the gas-lamp below in the Court to show Dolly, unable to tear herself away from the glorious array of preparation on the floor. There it stood, just under the empty chair with cushions, still waiting—waiting for its occupant to come again; and meanwhile a Godsend to the cat, who resumed her place the moment the intruder rose from it, with an implication that her forbearance had been great indeed to endure exclusion for so long. There was no more misgiving on the face of that little maid, putting the fiftieth touch on the perfection of her tea-cup arrangements, that her ideal entertainment would never compass realisation, than there was on the faces of the Royal Pair in their robes and decorations, gazing firmly across at Joan of Arc and St. George, in plaster, but done over bronze so you couldn't tell; precious possessions of Mrs. Burr, who was always inquiring what it would cost to repair Joan's sword—which had disintegrated and laid bare the wire in its soul—and never getting an estimate. Nor on the face of Mrs. Burr herself, coming upstairs from her job out at Mrs. Ragstroar's, and beaming—prosaically, but still beaming—on the young lady that had come to see her at the Hospital.