“Ah, Bobbie, our little baby!” she exclaimed, with a softened expression and a glowing eye that told her listener that whatever else the girl was, she was the apple of this lady’s eye. “She’s six years old and has been motherless for more than three of those years. Louise died in childbirth, an unhappy event that has had very bad effects on the whole family. You may expect Bobbie to be different,” she finished, inadequately. “She has had a succession of nursemaids and lately a governess, a Miss Milne, whom I procured for Andrew. A good sort of a girl. Bobbie is bright-not a great beauty, worse luck. She has a strong look of her father about the eyes, and his unfortunate coloring. Brownish hair, but Louise’s pleasant smile and disposition. Her manners are not what they should be, but I am sure you will take care of that. You’ll meet her later today. Max sent her home from church today with Mrs. Beecham, a friend of mine. He knew there would be confusion, with the wedding and all. He’ll pick her up and break the news to her. It won’t be so appalling for her as you might think. She was not close to her father. Well, you know the way he’s been lately. It will be better for you both to stay here a few days till she gets used to you. Rather hard on her to be set up with a total stranger at this time.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Too wrapped up in my own problems. It will be difficult for her. I hope we will get on together.”
“You will. It will be good for her to be able to get used to someone-someone who will be with her for more than a few months. The girls minding her lately never stopped long, what with Andrew’s behavior. She is at loose ends. I tried to mother her as much as I could, but when I wanted to have her here, Andrew invariably took the idea that I was Max’s accomplice, trying to get her moved to the Hall, from whence she would nevermore return to him, so I only saw her there, at the Cottage, and it was not as good as one could wish. However, I hope you will let me have her for a day now and then, and yourself too. How cozy we shall be-three women-’girls’ of all ages-to sit and gossip and giggle together. I am a great gossip; I love it, and I daresay you can tell me all the doings of the village. Is it true the butcher beats his wife?”
They enjoyed a long and entertaining gossip before Lady Jane suggested it was time to change for dinner. Max was coming, and she must haul Harold away from his tomes and see that he put on a clean shirt.
Sir Harold, Lord deVigne, Lady Jane, and Delsie were soon seated round an oval table in a large dining room, where the death and subsequent arrangements made up the dinner conversation, which was not so lugubrious as might be imagined. It led Sir Harold to an exposition on Milton’s “Lycidas,” an ode mourning the death of a friend, interspersed with more down-to-earth matters by his spouse and deVigne. It was hammered out by the three not interested in Milton that deVigne would be in charge of the funeral arrangements, and the callers would be greeted at the Hall.
“No formal announcement of the wedding will be made at all, with your approval, ma’am,” deVigne said to Delsie. “It is so singularly inappropriate to do so at this time. We shall say in the death announcement that he is survived by his wife, Mrs. Grayshott (nee Delsie Sommers) and his daughter, Roberta. That will be announcement enough. There is no question of its being overlooked. You will be presented as Mrs. Grayshott to the callers, and, as Jane so cleverly pointed out, a funeral call is no time to be overly curious as to the details.”
“Delsie is staying here with Bobbie for a few days, Max,” Jane told him. “Let the child become accustomed to her new mama while there is at least one familiar face around, in case she makes strange at first.”
“An excellent idea,” he agreed. “It will be a difficult period for Bobbie. It will give us time to send a few servants to the Cottage to clean it up a little as well.”
“A lot,” Jane countered. “It will require a small army.”
“Is there anyone of your family you wish to notify of your marriage?” Max asked next.
“No, there is no one,” she answered quietly.
“Strothingham ought to be informed,” Sir Harold mentioned.
As Sir Harold was so seldom aware even of important facts, his wife was astonished to learn he had come into contact with a rumor. Her eyes flew first to Sir Harold, then to deVigne, lastly to Delsie, who wondered that the lady should look embarrassed.
“I am not personally acquainted with my cousin, Strothingham,” Delsie answered. “Indeed, I have never so much as seen him.”
“Still, head of your family. Ought to be informed,” Sir Harold told her. “I’ll do it myself, Mrs. Grayshott. Not a close friend of Strothingham, but I was a crony of his uncle’s. Once told him I’d look you up, in fact. Did I ever do it?” he asked with a puzzled frown.
“No, I don’t believe you did,” she answered, staring at him, as folks were inclined to do when first becoming a little aware of his peculiarities.
“Bless my soul! What a memory I have. Shocking,” he said calmly, and went on eating, while Lady Jane and deVigne threw up their eyes in despair.
“Then the only remaining piece of business is to introduce you to Roberta,” deVigne said. “I brought her back with me. She is abovestairs with Miss Milne now. We shall speak of the running of the Cottage another time, Mrs. Grayshott.”
Her jaws clenched at the use of that name, Mrs. Grayshott, but her mind harked back to Sir Harold’s curious speech. He had known Strothingham, had known all this time she was related to him, had even promised to look her up. How different things might have been, had he done it.
After dinner, Lady Jane said she would bring Roberta down, but Delsie asked if she might go up to her instead. She wished the first meeting with the girl to be informal, in private, that she would not feel constrained to be stiff because of the onlookers. Her experience of children told her this was the better way to start off the friendship.
“A good idea,” Max agreed. “As I have already spoken to her of you, I shall make the introduction, if you have no objection?” He was overly careful, she thought, of consulting her on these matters since she had given him the hint.
“None in the world,” she replied, and they went together to the room Roberta was using as hers during the stay at the Dower House. She was a very ordinary-looking child. Mousy brown hair in pigtails, eyes distressingly like her father’s, but she had a winning smile, the absence of front teeth emphasizing the childish, vulnerable air.
“This is the lady I told you about, Bobbie,” he said. “Your new mother, Mrs. Grayshott.”
Delsie watched with amusement and a pang of sympathy as the child clung to deVigne’s fingers, jiggling back and forth shyly, while casting little peeps at herself.
“We’re going to be good friends,” Delsie said encouragingly, and put out her hand.
A little set of pink fingers reached out to take it. “Are you a wicked stepmother?” the girl asked, not in a condemning way at all, but in a spirit of curiosity.
“I hope not indeed!”
“I believe I may have inadvertently used the term stepmother,” deVigne explained.
“The ‘wicked,’ I trust, was her own invention?”
“All stepmothers are wicked,” Bobbie told her conclusively. “They step on you. I hope you’re not a hard stepper.”
“I shall try not to be as wicked as most,” Delsie assured her, then led her to the edge of the bed to sit down, to remove the obstacle of height. “I never beat little girls, or starve them, or hardly ever lock them in a dungeon, if they behave well.”
“Max has a dungeon,” she was told. “He’ll never lock me in it.”
“You must show it to me one day. I’ve never seen a dungeon,” Delsie answered.
“I will. It’s got big thick doors and no windows. It’s black as coal.”