general. So the girls had to chuck it. Jane only
let them put flowers in the pots on the visitors' mantel-pieces, and
then they had to ask the gardener which kind they might pick, because
nothing worth gathering happened to be growing in our own gardens just
then.

Their train got in at 12.27. We all went to meet them. Afterwards I
thought that was a mistake, because their aunt was with them, and she
wore black with beady things and a tight bonnet, and she said, when we
took our hats off, "Who are you?" quite crossly.

We said, "We are the Bastables; we've come to meet Daisy and Denny."

The aunt is a very rude lady, and it made us sorry for Daisy and Denny
when she said to them:

"_Are_ these the children? Do you remember them?"

We weren't very tidy, perhaps, because we'd been playing brigands in the
shrubbery; and we knew we should have to wash for dinner as soon as we
got back, anyhow. But still--

Denny said he thought he remembered us. But Daisy said, "Of course they
are," and then looked as if she was going to cry.

So then the aunt called a cab, and told the man where to drive, and put
Daisy and Denny in, and then she said:

"You two little girls may go too, if you like, but you little boys must
walk."

So the cab went off, and we were left. The aunt turned to us to say a
few last words. We knew it would have been about brushing your hair and
wearing gloves, so Oswald said, "Good-bye," and turned haughtily away,
before she could begin, and so did the others. No one but that kind of
black, beady, tight lady would say "little boys." She is like Miss
Murdstone in _David Copperfield_. I should like to tell her so; but she
would not understand. I don't suppose she has ever read anything but
_Markham's History_ and _Mangnall's Questions_--improving books like
that.

When we got home we found all four of those who had ridden in the cab
sitting in our sitting-room--we don't call it nursery now--looking very
thoroughly washed, and our girls were asking polite questions and the
others were saying "Yes" and "No" and "I don't know." We boys did not
say anything. We stood at the window and looked out till the gong went
for our dinner. We felt it was going to be awful--and it was. The
new-comers would never have done for knight-errants, or to carry the
cardinal's sealed message through the heart of France on a horse; they
would never have thought of anything to say to throw the enemy off the
scent when they got i