mother got up from her seat.
“Your own teas will be cold. Don’t stay any longer just now. You may run up to my room as soon as Roland comes in,” and for once the little girls felt they could not loiter or linger.
“There’s something awful the matter,” said Christabel, as they walked slowly upstairs. “P’raps robbers have got into Fareham and stolen lots of things, and Mummy’s come back to send detectives after them, and – ”
“Really, Chrissie, you are too silly,” interrupted Leila; “as if Mamma would look like that about a stupid burglary! Besides, there would have been no secret about it, and it would have been in the papers.”
“Then what can it be?” said Christabel, and as they were now at the nursery door, she ran in, without waiting for an answer, exclaiming to Nurse, quite heedless of Fanny’s presence, “Mummy’s come, and she looks as ill as anything, and so dreadfully – ”
Nurse shook her head with a slight glance of warning, which Leila caught, and by way of attracting her sister’s attention, pinched her arm.
“Leila!” cried Chrissie in a fury, and the pinch would probably have been repaid with interest, had not Nurse interfered.
“Fanny, we shall not have butter enough. Please fetch some more,” she said, and then, as the girl was leaving the room, she went on, in time for her to hear, “of course, dears, your poor Mamma must be dreadfully tired. Travelling so far in such a few days and so much to see to;” and when they were alone she added, “Miss Chrissie, I do wish you could take thought a little. I don’t know what you were going on to say, but Fanny is only a girl, and we don’t want gossip downstairs about – ” she hesitated.
Chrissie’s curiosity made her take this reproof in good part.
“About what?” she asked eagerly. “You know something that we don’t, and I don’t think it’s fair to have mysteries and secrets. We’re quite big enough to know too.”
“Yes, especially if you scream things out for Fanny to hear,” said Leila teasingly. “Why, Jap has more sense than that,” and she glanced at the little boy, who was seated at the table, his tea and bread-and-butter untouched, his face very grave indeed.
“You will understand everything very soon,” said Nurse, feeling that the time had come for her to try to make some impression on the children, and thus help their mother a little in her painful task. “Your Mamma is going to tell you herself, and I can only beg you, my poor dears, to think of her before yourselves and to be of comfort to her.”
There was no reply to this, beyond a murmur. Leila and Christabel felt overawed and vaguely frightened and yet excited. They found it difficult to swallow anything, but a sort of pride made them unwilling to show this, so the meal passed in unusual silence, Nurse’s voice coaxing Jasper to eat, being almost the only one heard.
Leila’s imagination, filled with the quantities of stories she had read, was hard at work on all sorts of extraordinary things that might have happened or were going to happen; Christabel was simply choking down a lump that would keep rising in her throat, and trying not to cry, while she repeated to herself, “Any way, it can’t be as bad as if Dads or Mummy had been killed on the railway, or died like old Uncle Percy.”
Roland generally came home about half-past five, but he had tea downstairs with his mother, or, if she were out or away, by himself, in his father’s study. It was less interrupting for him, as he usually had a good deal of work to do at home, than with the others in the nursery. So when a summons came for the little girls to go to Mrs Fortescue in her own room, they were not surprised to find their elder brother already there. His face, however, was not reassuring. Never had they seen him so grave – Leila even fancied he looked white. He was sitting beside his mother holding her hand.
She tried to smile cheerfully as Leila and Christabel came in, followed – very noiselessly – by Jasper, who had slipped out of the nursery behind them, being terribly afraid of being left out of the family conclave!
“Why, Jasper,” exclaimed his mother, when she caught sight of him, “I didn’t send for you – ”
“No, Mumsey, darlin’,” he replied, “but I’se come,” and he wriggled himself on to a corner of her sofa, where he evidently meant to stay. The others could not help laughing at him, half nervously, I daresay, but still it somewhat broke the strain which they were all feeling.
“We’re going to talk of very serious things, my boy,” Mrs Fortescue said, persisting a little, “and you are only seven, you see. You could scarcely understand. Don’t you think you had better run upstairs again? Nurse will give you something to amuse you.”
“No fank you. Please let me stay. I’m not so very little since my birfday, and if you’ll explain, I fink I’ll understand.”
By this time he had got hold of his mother’s other hand and was squeezing it tightly. She had not the heart to send him away.
“What you really need to know, my own darlings,” she began at last, rather suddenly, as if otherwise she could scarcely have spoken, “can be told you in a very few words. Till now you have been very happy children – at least I hope so – perhaps I should say ‘fortunate,’ for your father and I have made you our first thought and given you everything you wanted or could want. We were able to do this because we have had plenty of money. And now, in the most terribly unexpected way, everything is changed. Our poor old uncle’s death has brought a little dreamt-of state of things to light. He, and therefore we – for you know Daddy is his heir – just as if he had been his son, and almost all our means came from him – he was on the brink of ruin. And we – we are ruined.”
The children’s faces grew pale, and for a moment no one spoke. Then said Roland, with a sort of angry indignation in his voice —
“Did he know it, Mother? If he did – I must say it, even though he is dead – if he did, it was a wicked shame to hide it. If Dads had known – Dads who is so clever – something could have been done, or at worst we could have been preparing for it.”
Mrs Fortescue did not blame the boy for what he said, but she answered quietly —
“Your father felt almost as you do, at first,” she said, “till things were explained a little. It seems that poor uncle had no idea that the state of his affairs was desperate, until the very last – it was the shock of a letter telling this that must have caused the stroke that killed him. Aunt Margaret found the letter in his hand, though he was unconscious and never spoke afterwards.”
“But still,” Roland went on, though his tone was softer, “I can’t understand it, for Fareham belonged to him and it must come to father, mustn’t it?”
“Yes, it is entailed. But it is not a very large property, nor a productive one. It is a charming place as a home, but expensive to keep up. Uncle’s large income was from other sources – not land-investments. Some of these must have begun to pay less for the last few years, and to make up for this and be able to go on giving us as much as we have always had, he was foolish enough to try other things – to speculate, as it is called. He must have lost a good deal of money a year or so ago, and since then it has all been getting worse and worse, and now – well; practically all is gone.”
“Still,” Roland went on, looking puzzled, “there’s Fareham.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Chrissie. “Why shouldn’t we go and live there all the year round and not
