"What, my boy?"
"It _is_ so cold here," repeated Walter; "it really feels terrible to come back to. Supposing we all go down there for a couple of months or so, to escape the cold? We could keep the children till Bertram is strong again and able to make his plans. I think we"d feel quite queer without them now. Besides, I promised him to bring them back to him."
"What do you say, Rosamond?" said Auntie.
"I should like it very much. It would be so nice not to part with them just yet."
So it was decided. You can imagine how much had to be told to the children the next day. Mingled sadness and happiness--warp and woof of the web of life!
But when they found themselves once more on the railway, with the kind friends they had learnt to know so well, really on the way to "Papa," I think the happiness was uppermost.
He proved to be the dearest of Papas; not the very least like what they had imagined him. "Of course not," Gladys said; "people and things are never like what one fancies they will be." But though he was older and grayer, and perhaps at first sight a little _sadder_ than she had expected, he grew merry enough in the great happiness of having them with him, and as he gradually got strong and well again he seemed, too, to become younger.
"Anyway," said Gladys, a few weeks after their arrival at Nice, "he _couldn"t_ be nicer, could he, Roger?" in which opinion Roger solemnly agreed.
"And now he"s getting better," she added; "it"s not a bad thing he"s been ill, for it"s made the doctor say he must never go back to India again."
Is that all there is to tell about the "two little waifs?" I think I must lift the curtain for an instant "ten years later," to show you little Roger a tall strong schoolboy, rather solemn still, but bidding fair to be all his father could wish him, and very devoted to a tiny girl of about the age at which we first saw Gladys, and who, as her mother is pretty Rosamond, he persists in calling his "niece," and with some show of reason, for her _real_ uncle, "Walter," is now the husband of his sister Gladys!
And long before this, by the bye, another marriage had come to pa.s.s which it may amuse you to hear of. There is a new Madame Nestor in the Rue Verte, as well as the cheery old lady who still hobbles about briskly, though with a crutch. And the second Madame Nestor"s first name is "Leonie." She is, I think, quite as clever as Mademoiselle Anna, and certainly _very_ much better tempered.
And whenever any of the people you have heard of in this little book come to Paris, you may be sure they pay a visit to the little old shop, which is as full as ever of sofas and chairs, and where they always receive the heartiest welcome from the Nestor family.
I wish, for my part, the histories of all "little waifs" ended as happily!
THE END.
BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON.
_October_, 1883.
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