“Swan,” said Valentine, “when he had taken leave of his hostess, this is no news to you.”

“No, sir, Joseph told me all about it afore he sailed, and how he thought he’d got over it.  Mr. Mortimer knows, as you’re aware.  Well, lastly, Joseph wrote again and told me he was fairly breaking his heart about her, and he should try his chance once more.  You see, sir, his ways and fashions and hers are not alike.  It would not have answered here—­but there they’d both have to learn perfectly new ways and manners, and speak to their feller creatures in a new language.  There’s hardly another Englishman for her to measure him with, and not one English lady to let her know she should have made a better match.”

“Mr. Mortimer knows?”

“Ay, sir.”

“And you never told your wife?”

“No, she has a good deal to hear, Mr. Valentine, besides that, and I thought I’d tell it her all at once.”

Valentine saw that he was expected to ask a question here.

“What, Swanny, is something else coming off then?”

“Ay, sir; you see, Mr. Melcombe, I’m lost here, I’m ekal to something better, Mr. Mortimer knows it as well as I do.  He’s said as much to me more than once.  What he’ll do without me I’m sure I don’t know, but I know well enough he’ll never get such another.”

“No, I don’t suppose he will.”

“There ain’t such a gardener going—­not for his weight in gold.  But I’m off in the spring.  I’ve done a’most all but break it to my wife.  It’s Joseph that’s helping me, and for hindrance I’ve got a Methodist chapel and a boarded floor.  There’s boarded floors to her kitchen, and back kitchen, as Mr. Mortimer put in for her, because she was so rheumatic, they air what she chiefly vally’s the place for.  But at some of them small West India islands there’s a fine opening, Joey says, for a man with a headpiece as can cultivate, and knows what crops require, and I ought to go.  I’m only sixty-one or thereabouts.  You’ll not say anything about it, sir,” he continued, as the twins, who were in the garden, came towards Valentine.

They brought him in triumph to the schoolroom, which was decorated, and full of the wedding presents the children had made for their father and the dear mamma.

“And you’ll remember,” said Bertram, “how you promised us—­promised us with all your might, that we should come to Melcombe.”

“Yes, all of us,” proceeded Anastasia; “he said the little ones too.”

“So you should have done, you poor darlings, but for that accident,” said Valentine.

“And we were to see the pears and apples gathered, and have such fun.  Do you know that you’re a sort of uncle now to us?”

“What sort?  The right sort?”

“Yes, and now when shall we come?”

“I am afraid I shall be away all the winter.”

“In the spring, then, and father and the dear mamma.”

“It’s a long time till the spring,” said Valentine, with a sigh; “but if I am at Melcombe then-”