Mother looked at them, and then said: 

“Bedtime, chicks!  Come along!” and went up with us.

It was quite weird, going to bed at nine o’clock in the morning.  We pulled down all the shades so we could sleep, though I don’t really think we needed to, because I know that as soon as I shut my eyes I was sound asleep.

When I woke up the room was quite dim, and Mother and Father were standing at the door talking.  Father looked awfully tired, but dear and glad, and he wouldn’t let me tell him how sorry I was about it all.  Mother said that even more surprising things had been happening, and that if I’d slept enough for a time, I’d better come down to supper.  That was queer, too,—­dressing in the twilight and coming down to supper, instead of to breakfast.

We all talked a lot at supper, of course, and people kept asking questions.  I had to do most of the answering, because Jerry always left out the parts about himself, and yet it was he who did all the wonderful things.  We had bottles of ginger-pop, because it was a sort of feast, and Father got up and proposed toasts, just like a real banquet.  First he said: 

“Jerry!  I’m glad to have a son with a level head.”

Then he said: 

“Christine!” and looked at me very hard, till I wanted to turn away.  But they all drank it just the same as Jerry’s, though I didn’t deserve it at all.  Then Father held up his glass and said very gently: 

“Greg!” And when I tried to drink it, the ginger-pop choked me, and Jerry banged me between the shoulders, which, of course, only made it worse, because it wasn’t that sort of choke.

Then Jerry jumped up and said: 

“We ought to drink to the Bottle Man, I think.  And, by the way, ‘Bottle Man’ looks all right in a letter, but it’s queer, rather, to say to you.  Haven’t you really a real name?”

Our man and Aunt Ailsa looked at each other as if they were going to say something, and then the Bottle Man twinkled, and said: 

“Very soon you’ll be able to call me Uncle Andrew.”

This part seems to be nothing but explanations, which are horrid, but there were lots, and I can’t help it.  Of course Jerry and I sat staring in surprise, and there had to be explanations.  And what do you think!  Our own Bottle Man was that “Somebody Westland” that Aunt Ailsa had wept so about.  The casualty list was perfectly right in saying that he was wounded and missing (though it came very late, because by that time he was in America), and she thought, of course, that he was dead, because she didn’t hear from him.  And he’d written to her from the French hospital and the letter never came.  When he came back, all sick and wounded, to America, somebody who didn’t know anything about it told him that Aunt Ailsa was going to marry Mr. Something-or-other, so our poor man went off sadly to his island and didn’t write to her any more.  He’d never heard of us, because of course her name isn’t Holford.  And she’d never heard of his aunt, nor Blue Harbor, nor the island, so of course she didn’t know anything about it when we read his letters to her.  Oh, it was very tangly and bewildering and it took lots of explaining, but at the end of supper there was just enough ginger-pop left to drink to both of them.