L. T. Meade

“ The loss of the tankard was certainly disquieting, but she felt sure that with the aid of the stolen letters she could substantiate her boy’s claim, and she also reflected that if the tankard was lost to her it was also lost to her brother-in-law, Rupert Lovel.
So life went quite smoothly at Avonsyde, and day after day the weather became more balmy and springlike, and day after day Miss Griselda’s face wore a softer and gentler expression; for the little heir-apparent was altogether after her own heart, and she was contented, as all women are when they find a worthy object to love. ”

“ You don’t want Avonsyde. Then I am your friend, little Phil Lovel. Here are three kisses—one for you, one for Rachel, one for Kitty. Give my kisses as from yourself to the little girls. But I am not what you think me, Phil. I am no supernatural lady who can give gifts or can dazzle with unusual beauty. I am just a plain woman who lives here most of the year and earns her bread with hard and daily labor. I cannot give money, for I have not got it. I can be your friend, however. Not a powerful friend—certainly not; but no true friendship is to be lightly thrown away. ”

“ If I could only see them both and kiss them once I should be satisfied.”
“You shall kiss them hundreds of times when May comes,” answered the old servant. “And they are well and bonny and Miss Rachel loves you; and the little one, why, of course her heart will go out to you when you hold her in your arms again.”
“Six years!” repeated the poor lady, clasping her hands, letting the lovely lace fall to the ground, and gazing into the glowing fire in the grate. “Six years for a mother to starve! Oh, Nancy, how could good women be so cruel? I believe Miss Grizel and Miss Katharine are good. ”

“ Happy as he was at Avonsyde, there were so many, many things he must not talk about. He must never mention Rupert, nor Gabrielle, nor Peggy; he must never breathe the name of Belmont nor say a word about his old nurse Betty. All the delightful times he had spent with his Australian cousins must be as though they had never been. He must not tell about the delicious hours he and Betty had spent together in the little cottage behind the garden when his mother had been away in Melbourne. He must not speak about the excursions that Rupert had taken with him. ”

“ When Phil opened his eyes he was quite sure for several moments that all his best dreams were realized. He was in a very tiny parlor (he loved small rooms, for they reminded him of the cottage at the back of the garden) ; he was lying full length on an old-fashioned and deliciously soft sofa, and a lady with a tender and beautiful face was bending over him; the firelight flickered in a cozy little grate and the sunlight poured in through a latticed window. ”

“ The splendid air of Avonsyde undoubtedly strengthened him, but the strain of always appearing bright and well was sometimes almost too much, and he wondered how long he could go on pretending to be quite the strongest little boy in the world. He fancied now how nice it would be to tell the kind lady of the forest how weak he really was; how his heart often beat almost to suffocation ”

“ If you want Avonsyde, I suppose you must have it some day when the old ladies die. I’ll do my best not to talk about Rupert, and I’ll try to seem very strong, and I’ll never, never tell about the pain in my side. Give me a kiss, mother. You shan’t starve nor be unhappy. Oh! what an age we have been chattering here, and Kitty is waiting for me, and I do so want to see the armory! I wonder if there are ghosts there? It sounds silly to believe in them; but Kitty does, and she’s a dear little girl, nearly as nice as Gabrielle. ”

“ Griselda, there is now one plain and manifest duty before you—I lay it as my dying charge on you and Katharine. I leave the search which you are to institute as your mission in life. While you both live Avonsyde is yours, but you must search the world over if necessary for Rupert Lovel’s descendants; and when you discover them you are to elect a bonny stalwart boy of the house as your heir. ”

“ Phil was certainly a very queer little boy, but she was quite convinced he must be her real true cousin, that he was not a make-believe, that he would stay on at Avonsyde as the heir, and that she would always have a companion of her own age to play with.
“He will get tired of the forest by and by,” she said to herself, “and then he will like best to play with me, and we can fish all day together. How jolly that will be! What a good thing it is that he is so nearly my own age, and that he is not older; for if he were he would go every where with Rachel and be her friend. ”

“ It doesn’t do for a hearty young chap like you to wear such a dismal face. I tell you your claim is as good as established.”
“But I don’t know that I want it to be established,” said young Rupert Lovel. “It is not nice to think of breaking that lady’s heart. I don’t know what Gabrielle would say to doing anything so cruel to our mother’s friend.”
“Tut, lad, what a lot of rubbish you talk! If you are the heir you are, and you can’t shirk your responsibility, even if you don’t quite like it. Well, we’ll have a long talk with Rachel and get to the bottom of everything to-night.” ”

“ Just the minute we begin talking about anything interesting you give one of those jerks, just as if you had a cruel rider on your back. I can’t think what it all means. If you have a dearest friend, there’s no harm in it; and if you had a Betty to take care of you, there’s no harm in that; and if you lived in a cottage in a plantation, that isn’t a sin; and if you did go into the forest to meet the lady, and you didn’t meet her, although you were nearly swallowed up by a bog, why—why—what’s the matter, Phil? ”

“ I’m a little boy with lots of secrets, and I never can tell them, not to you nor to anybody at Avonsyde—no, not to anybody. I’ll get accustomed to it in time, but I don’t like it, for naturally I’m the kind of boy who can’t keep a secret.’
“What a horrid man you’ll grow up!” said Kitty, eying her cousin with marked disapproval. “You’ll be so reserved and cross-grained and disagreeable. You’ll have been pulled up short so often that you’ll look jerky. Oh, dear me, Phil, I wouldn’t be you for a great deal!” ”

“ And there are squirrels in the forest—hundreds of squirrels—and all kinds of birds, and beetles and spiders, and ants and lizards! Mother, the forest is such a lovely place! Is this our bedroom, mother? What a jolly room! I say, wouldn’t Rupert like it just?”
“If you’re quick, Phil,” began Kitty—“if you’re very quick washing your hands and brushing your hair, we can go back through the armory—that’s the next oldest part to the tower. I steal into the armory sometimes in the dusk, for I do so hope some of the chain-armor will rattle. Do you believe in ghosts, Phil? I do and so does Rachel.” ”

“ Why, ma’am, all the country round knows that the ladies at Avonsyde are looking out for a strong heir; they go direct against the will if they give the old place to a sickly one. No, ma’am, Master Phil Lovel ain’t the heir for Avonsyde. And is it likely, ma’am, that the ladies would be putting advertisements in all the papers, foreign and otherwise, for the last five years and a half, and sending over special messengers to the other side of the globe, and never yet a strong, hearty, real heir turn up? ”

“ He looked inquiringly at Miss Katharine; then he gazed searchingly at Miss Griselda; then he shook himself and said abruptly:
“I beg your pardon—what did you ask me?”
“Oh, Phil, how rude!” interrupted Mrs. Lovel. “The ladies asked you if you were tired, love. Tell them at once that you are not in the least so. Pale children are so often considered delicate,” continued Mrs. Lovel anxiously, “whereas they are quite acknowledged by many physicians to be stronger than the rosy ones. Say you are not tired, Phil, and thank Miss Katharine for taking an interest in your health.” ”

“ Clementina smiled most provokingly, and raising her whip gave gentle little Surefoot a couple of sharp strokes. The little horse quivered indignantly, and Rachel glanced at Phil, who was riding behind on Brownie.
“Oh, Phil,” she called out, “Clementina is so unkind to your horse. It is well for you, Clementina, that you are on Surefoot’s back. He is so sweet-tempered he won’t resent even cruelty very much; but if you dared to whip my horse, Ruby, you would have good reason to repent of your rashness.” ”

“ Newbolt raised her eyebrows and gazed at Mrs. Lovel as if she were talking the rankest heresy.
“For them as don’t value the antique there’s rooms spacious and cheerful and abundantly furnished with modern vanities in the new part of the house,” she replied. “Miss Rachel and Miss Kitty, for instance; their bedroom isn’t built more than three hundred years—a big room enough and with a lot of sunlight, but terrible modern, and not to be made no ’count of at Avonsyde; and then there are two new bedrooms over the drawing-rooms, where we put strangers. ”

“ Poor, dear little boy!”
“No, ma’am, I don’t say he’s so particular ill. He walked strong enough and he looked up into the old lady’s face as bright as you please; but he had the look—I have seen it before, and I never could be mistaken about that look on any face. Not long for this world was written all over him. Too good for this world was the way his eyes shone and his lips smiled. Dear heart, ma’am, don’t cry. Such as them is the blessed ones; they go away to a deal finer place and a grander home than any Avonsyde.”
“True,” said Mrs. Lovel. ”

“ What was Rupert Lovel to us that we should place a likeness to him before a likeness to our own dead brother? I say it is unfair that Valentine’s children should have neither part nor lot in his old home. I, for one, am willing to welcome them to Avonsyde.”
Miss Griselda had always a most placid face; she now said in her calmest tones:
“There is no need to excite yourself, Katharine. I too think the children have a claim on us. An arrangement can easily be made about the children—their mother is the difficulty.”
The face of the plainly dressed young woman could scarcely grow any paler. ”

“ Is he your brother, love?”
“My brother?” laughed Rachel. “I have no one but Kitty. I have a mother living somewhere—she’s lost, my mother is, and I’m going all round the world to look for her when I’m old enough; but I have no brother—I wish I had. Philip Lovel is a little new, strange boy who is going to be heir of Avonsyde. He came to-day with his mother. I don’t much like his mother. Now good-night, old woman. I’ll keep the good lady’s secret most faithfully.”
Rachel blew a kiss to the anxious-looking old servant, then ran gayly back to where she had left Surefoot. ”

“ Kitty stamped her foot.
“Don’t say that!” she replied. “I hate people who are not quite sure about things. I want to have a real boy cousin to play with. Two or three make-believes came here, but they went away again. Of course we all found them out at once, and they went away. I do trust you are not another make-believe, Philip. You’re very pale and very thin, but I do hope what’s of you is real.”
“Oh, yes; what’s of me is real enough,” said Phil, with a little sigh. “Where are you going to take me, Kitty? Into the forest? I want to see the forest. ”

“ I must not speak to little Rachel Lovel.”
“She knows that,” said Phil in a sorrowful voice; for the lady’s whiteness and agitation and distress filled him with the keenest sympathy. “Rachel knows that you and she may not speak, but let her look at you. Do! She will be so good; she will not break her word to you for the world.” ”

“ But now that the said lady seemed to wish to see Phil, and now that she, Rachel, had almost bound herself to bring Phil to the trysting-place in the forest, she began to regard him with new interest. Kitty and Phil had long ere this established a world of their own—a world peopled by caterpillars of enormous size, by the most sagacious spiders that were ever known to exist, by beetles of rare brilliancy, by birds, by squirrels—in short, by the numerous creature-life of the great forest ”

“ You give little tired boys like me great rest; and I want beyond words to go with you, but there is my mother.”
“Your mother will be cared for. Come. I can give you something better than Avonsyde.”
“Oh, I don’t want Avonsyde! I am not the rightful heir.”
“The rightful heir is coming,” interrupted the lady of the forest. “Look for him on the 5th of May, and look for me too there. Farewell!”
She vanished, and Phil awoke, to find his mother sitting by his bedside, her face bent over him, her eyes wide open with terror.
“Oh, my darling, how you have looked! Are you—are you very ill?” ”

“ Lovel is hiding Master Phil. What business had she to get into such a way about a bit of an English newspaper, and to hurry off with the child all in a twinkling like, and to be that flustered and nervous? And oh! Miss Gabrielle, the fuss about her clothes; and ‘did she look genteel in this?’ and ‘did she look quite the lady in that?’ And then the way she went off, bidding good-by to no one but me. Oh! she’s after no good; mark my words for it.”
“But she can do us no harm, Betty,” said Gabrielle. “Neither my father nor Rupert is likely to be injured by a weak kind of woman like Aunt Bella. ”

“ It seems to me a great pity that people should try to pretend—everybody’s always trying to pretend; and what is the use of it? Now, if you had not tried to pretend that you could ride as well or better than Rachel, you wouldn’t have got into this trouble and we wouldn’t have been so terribly sorry. Where was the use of it, Clementina?” added Phil, gazing hard at the abashed and astonished young lady; “for nobody could expect you to ride as well as Rachel, who is a country girl and has been on horseback such a lot, you know.” ”

“ He is tall and strong and very broad, and he has a look of Rachel, and his cheeks are brown, and his hair is black, and his arms are full of muscle, and his shoulders are perfectly square, and he holds himself up so erect, just as if he was drilled. He is strong beyond anybody else I know, and yet he is kind; he wouldn’t hurt even a fly. Oh, if you only knew him. He’s my picture of an heir!”
Phil’s face flushed and his lovely eyes shone. Aunt Griselda stooped down and kissed him.
“You are a queer boy,” she said. “You have described your ancestor, Rupert Lovel, to the life. ”

“ He need keep no secrets from her, for if she was a fairy she must know them already; and he might tell her all about his difficulties, and how his small heart was torn with great love for Rupert and great love for his mother. He might tell the lady of the forest how very little he cared for Avonsyde, except as a possible future home for his gay and brave Cousin Rupert, and he might ask her to give him the bag of precious gold to satisfy his mother and keep her from starving. Phil was dreadfully oppressed with all the secrets he had to keep. ”