"Nonsense, Sidney, it must be long past dinner-time! I"ve been so lost in my own thoughts that somehow I----"
"Now, Mother, you know you"ve been asleep and only just woke up!" said Edna, from one of the chintz couches.
"Have I? Perhaps I _did_ drop off just for a few seconds. In fact I must have done--for I begin to recollect having quite a curious dream. I dreamed that you and I, Sidney, were King and Queen of some absurd fairy Kingdom or other, and that--well, it was not at _all_ a pleasant dream."
"It"s a most singular coincidence, Selina," he said, "but I"ve been dreaming much the same sort of thing myself!"
The others looked at one another, but none of them ventured to express just yet what was in all their minds.
"Have you?" said his wife languidly. "I suppose it was telepathy or something of that kind. Ring for Mitch.e.l.l, Clarence--I hope dinner has not been allowed to get cold. And--and Miss Heritage seems to have left the drawing-room. Run up, Ruby, and tell her to come down."
"I don"t believe she"s upstairs at all, mummy," said Ruby. "No, of course she _can"t_ be. We left her in the Palace--don"t you remember?
_She"s_ Queen now, you know?"
"Queen! Miss Heritage! Why, you don"t mean to tell me you"ve been dreaming that too?"
"So have I, as far as that goes, mater," said Clarence. "If it _was_ a dream, and not--not----"
"How could it be anything else? Besides, here we all _are_, exactly as we were!"
"We"ve got our cloaks and things on, though," said Ruby. "_I_ know how it was! We"ve been brought here in the stork-car while we were fast asleep. We sat up ever so long waiting for it."
"It can"t be! I won"t believe anything so absurd. Draw the curtains, somebody, and pull up the blinds.... It"s odd, but it certainly looks more like early morning than any other time. Clarence, go out and strike the gong. Perhaps the maids haven"t finished dressing yet."
Clarence went out accordingly. The gong bellowed and boomed from the hall, but there was no sound of stirring above. "I say," he reported, "I"ve just looked into the dining-room, and all the chairs are upside down on the table. That looks rather as if we"d been away for a bit--what?"
"Clarence! You"re not beginning to think that--that all that about our having been a Royal Family may be _true_?"
"Well, Mater," he said, "if we haven"t been in Marchenland, where _have_ we been? Oh yes, we"ve been Royalties right enough--and a pretty rotten job we made of it!"
At this time there was a deprecatory knock at the drawing-room door.
"Mitch.e.l.l!" cried her mistress, "don"t you know better than to--?"
However, it was not Mitch.e.l.l that entered--but a person unknown--a respectable-looking elderly female, who seemed to have made a hasty toilette.
"Askin" your pardons," she said, "but if you were wishing to see the family, they"re away just now."
"We _are_ the family," replied Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson. "We have been--er--abroad, but have returned. And we should be glad of breakfast at once."
"I can git you a cup of tea as soon as the kittle"s on the boil," she said, "but I"m only put in as caretaker like, and I"ve nothink in the "ouse except bread and b.u.t.ter. The shops"ll be opening now, so if you don"t object to waiting a little, I could go out and get you a nadd.i.c.k and eggs and such like."
"Yes, buck up, old lady!" said Clarence, "and I say, see if you can get a _Daily Mail_ or a paper of some sort."
"What are you so anxious to see the paper for?" inquired Edna after the caretaker had departed.
"Only wanted to know what month we"re in," he said. "It would have looked so silly to ask her what day it is. We must have been--over there--a good long time."
"At least a year!" said Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, no longer able to sustain the dream theory. "More. When we left it was quite early Spring--and now all the trees are out! Sidney, what _will_ your firm say to your having been away so long without letting them know where you were?"
"I can"t say, my love. I"m afraid they might make it a ground for a dissolution of partnership--unless I can give them a satisfactory explanation of my absence."
"The difficulty will be to find one!" said his wife. "As for you, Clarence, they will be too glad to see you back again at the Insurance Office to ask any questions."
"I dare say they would, Mater, only--it didn"t seem worth mentioning before--but, as a matter of fact, I--er--resigned the day we left."
"Then it seems," said Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson bitterly, "we have been sent back here to find ourselves in comparative poverty! I hope and trust"--she felt furtively in her bead handbag before continuing more cheerfully--"that we shall be able to struggle through somehow."
She knew now that they would not be without resources. She could feel them through the handkerchief in which they had been wrapped--two pieces which she had had the presence of mind to pick up from the Halma board as she pa.s.sed through Edna"s and Ruby"s chamber the evening before. One was carved from a ruby, the other from a diamond, and each of them was worth a small fortune. Her one regret now was that she had not pocketed several more while she was about it. But, although she would have been perfectly within her rights in doing so--for were they not her own property?--she had thought at the time that it would be risky to take any number that could be noticed. There was always the chance that Miss Heritage might count them!
However, she said nothing about this to her family just then; it would be a pleasant surprise for them later on.
"But," she continued, "I _do_ think it might have occurred to Miss Heritage--I can"t and won"t call her by any other name--that, as she was known to be in my employment when we left "Inglegarth," our returning without her may expose us to very unpleasant remarks. People may think I"ve discharged her--left her stranded in foreign parts--or I don"t know what!"
"That is what she _calculated_ on, no doubt!" said Edna.
"Oh, stop it, Edna!" said her brother, "you ought to know her better than that!"
"Oh, of course she"s an angel--in _your_ estimation! But she could have saved mother from being misunderstood if she"d wanted to--and since she hasn"t--well, I"ll leave you to draw the obvious inference!"
Ruby, who had been roving about the room during this conversation, now broke in:
"Mummy," she cried, "there"s a letter here for you, and it looks like darling Queen Daphne"s writing!" And she brought it to her mother. It was enclosed in a folded square of parchment--envelopes, like other modern conveniences, being unknown in Marchenland--and fastened with the royal signet, which Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson broke with a melancholy reminiscence of the satisfaction it had given her to use the seal herself.
"_Dear Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson_," she read aloud--"_As I am about to be married here very shortly, my return with you to England will naturally be impossible. It is a great grief to me to have to part from my dear little pupil Ruby, to whom I have become so deeply and sincerely attached. Will you please tell her from me that I shall never forget her, and miss her very much indeed.--Believe me, very truly yours,_
DAPHNE HERITAGE."
"Well," commented Mrs. Stimpson, while poor Ruby"s tears began to flow afresh, "that is certainly a letter which I could show to _anybody_.
Though I notice she doesn"t say anything about being grieved to part with anyone but Ruby. A deliberate slight to the rest of us! And then the meanness of turning us out without the slightest return for all we"ve done for her! It _does_ show such petty ingrat.i.tude!"
"Easy on, Mater!" said Clarence. "She don"t seem to have let us go away quite empty-handed after all. I mean to say there"s a box or something over there that I fancy I"ve seen before in the Palace."
He went up to examine it as he spoke. It was an oblong case, rather deeper and squarer than a backgammon box, covered with faded orange velvet and fitted with clasps and corners of finely wrought silver set with precious stones.
Inside were the emerald and opal "halma" board and ruby and diamond pieces, and with them a slip of parchment with Daphne"s handwriting. "_I thought perhaps_," she had written, "_you might care to have this.
Princess Rapunzelhauser tells me she is afraid two of the men are missing, but I hope she is mistaken and they are really all there.--D._"
"_I_ shall never play with them!" declared Ruby breaking down once more.
"I--I couldn"t bear to, without Her!"
"Of _course_ you will never play with them, my dear," said her mother, "they are far too valuable for that."
A very inadequate impression of Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson"s strength of character must have been given if anyone expects that this gift would cause her the slightest degree of shame or contrition; on the contrary, it only served to justify her in her own eyes--not that she needed any justification--for having appropriated those two pieces. She had merely antic.i.p.ated--and nothing would be easier than to put them back in the box without being observed.
"A magnificent present!" p.r.o.nounced Mr. Stimpson. "Really what I should call very handsome indeed of her. If we ever had to sell this set they"d fetch a colossal sum--_here_--simply colossal!"
"And a minute ago, Mater," said Clarence, "you accused her of being mean!"
"Well," she replied, "and what are these things, when all is said, to the riches we"ve surrendered to her? A mere trifle--which she"ll never even miss!"