"Very well!" Sylvie merrily replied. "This is Bruno. It doesn't take long. He's only got one name!"

"There's another name to me!" Bruno protested, with a reproachful look at the Mistress of the Ceremonies. "And it's--' Esquire'!"

"Oh, of course. I forgot," said Sylvie. "Bruno--Esquire!"

"And did you come here to meet me, my children?" I enquired.

"You know I said we'd come on Tuesday," Sylvie explained. "Are we the proper size for common children?"

"Quite the right size for children," I replied, (adding mentally "though not common children, by any means!") "But what became of the nursemaid?"

"It are gone!" Bruno solemnly replied.

"Then it wasn't solid, like Sylvie and you?"

"No. Oo couldn't touch it, oo know. If oo walked at it, oo'd go right froo!"

"I quite expected you'd find it out, once," said Sylvie. "Bruno ran it against a telegraph post, by accident. And it went in two halves. But you were looking the other way."

I felt that I had indeed missed an opportunity: to witness such an event as a nursemaid going 'in two halves' does not occur twice in a life-time!

"When did oo guess it were Sylvie?" Bruno enquired.

{Image...'It went in two halves'}

"I didn't guess it, till it was Sylvie," I said. "But how did you manage the nursemaid?"

"Bruno managed it," said Sylvie. "It's called a Phlizz."

"And how do you make a Phlizz, Bruno?"

"The Professor teached me how," said Bruno. "First oo takes a lot of air--"

"Oh, Bruno!" Sylvie interposed. "The Professor said you weren't to tell!"

"But who did her voice?" I asked.

"Indeed it's troubling you too much, Sir! She can walk very well on the flat."

Bruno laughed merrily as I turned hastily from side to side, looking in all directions for the speaker. "That were me!" he gleefully proclaimed, in his own voice.

"She can indeed walk very well on the flat," I said. "And I think I was the Flat."

By this time we were near the Hall. "This is where my friends live," I said. "Will you come in and have some tea with them?"

Bruno gave a little jump of joy: and Sylvie said "Yes, please. You'd like some tea, Bruno, wouldn't you? He hasn't tasted tea," she explained to me, "since we left Outland."

"And that weren't good tea!" said Bruno. "It were so welly weak!"

CHAPTER 20. LIGHT COME, LIGHT GO.

Lady Muriel's smile of welcome could not quite conceal the look of surprise with which she regarded my new companions.

I presented them in due form. "This is Sylvie, Lady Muriel. And this is Bruno."

"Any surname?" she enquired, her eyes twinkling with fun.

"No," I said gravely. "No surname."

She laughed, evidently thinking I said it in fun; and stooped to kiss the children a salute to which Bruno submitted with reluctance: Sylvie returned it with interest.

While she and Arthur (who had arrived before me) supplied the children with tea and cake, I tried to engage the Earl in conversation: but he was restless and distrait, and we made little progress. At last, by a sudden question, he betrayed the cause of his disquiet.

"Would you let me look at those flowers you have in your hand?"

"Willingly!" I said, handing him the bouquet. Botany was, I knew, a favourite study of his: and these flowers were to me so entirely new and mysterious, that I was really curious to see what a botanist would say of them.

They did not diminish his disquiet. On the contrary, he became every moment more excited as he turned them over. "These are all from Central India!" he said, laying aside part of the bouquet. "They are rare, even there: and I have never seen them in any other part of the world. These two are Mexican--This one--" (He rose hastily, and carried it to the window, to examine it in a better light, the flush of excitement mounting to his very forehead) "--is, I am nearly sure--but I have a book of Indian Botany here--" He took a volume from the book-shelves, and turned the leaves with trembling fingers. "Yes! Compare it with this picture! It is the exact duplicate! This is the flower of the Upas-tree, which usually grows only in the depths of forests; and the flower fades so quickly after being plucked, that it is scarcely possible to keep its form or colour even so far as the outskirts of the forest! Yet this is in full bloom! Where did you get these flowers?" he added with breathless eagerness.

I glanced at Sylvie, who, gravely and silently, laid her finger on her lips, then beckoned to Bruno to follow her, and ran out into the garden; and I found myself in the position of a defendant whose two most important witnesses have been suddenly taken away. "Let me give you the flowers!" I stammered out at last, quite 'at my wit's end' as to how to get out of the difficulty. "You know much more about them than I do!"

"I accept them most gratefully! But you have not yet told me--" the Earl was beginning, when we were interrupted, to my great relief, by the arrival of Eric Lindon.

To Arthur, however, the new-comer was, I saw clearly, anything but welcome. His face clouded over: he drew a little back from the circle, and took no further part in the conversation, which was wholly maintained, for some minutes, by Lady Muriel and her lively cousin, who were discussing some new music that had just arrived from London.

"Do just try this one!" he pleaded. "The music looks easy to sing at sight, and the song's quite appropriate to the occasion."

"Then I suppose it's

'Five o'clock tea!

Ever to thee Faithful I'll be, Five o'clock tea!"'

laughed Lady Muriel, as she sat down to the piano, and lightly struck a few random chords.

"Not quite: and yet it is a kind of 'ever to thee faithful I'll be!'

It's a pair of hapless lovers: he crosses the briny deep: and she is left lamenting."

"That is indeed appropriate!" she replied mockingly, as he placed the song before her. "And am I to do the lamenting? And who for, if you please?"

She played the air once or twice through, first in quick, and finally in slow, time; and then gave us the whole song with as much graceful ease as if she had been familiar with it all her life:--

"He stept so lightly to the land, All in his manly pride: He kissed her cheek, he pressed her hand, Yet still she glanced aside.