Part 5 (2/2)
So she ate her little triangles of toast-- way peculiar to Grannie's housekeeping--without enjoying the scrunch, scrunch between her teeth so much as usual Even the early strawberries and cream found her somewhat absent-minded
But after tea was cleared away and the room tidied up, Aunt Mary disappeared for a short time and returned with her hands behind her back She stood before Mollie, and in a sole words:
”Neevie neevie nick nack, Which hand will ye tak?
Tak the right or tak the wrong, I'll beguile ye if I can”
This was too interesting to be ignored Mollie sat up and becaain She looked critically at Aunt Mary's arot no inforhed:
”I _won't_ have the wrong, please, I'll have the right”
Aunt Mary laughed too ”You are too clever, Miss Mollie That is not the way _I_ did neevie-neevie when I was young” She brought her right hand round as she spoke, and in it was a chare, varnished, and clamped at the corners with brass She laid it on Mollie's lap, and watched the sliding lid being pulled out by a pair of i-saw puzzle
”Oh, where _did_ you get it?” Mollie cried joyfully ”I _adore_ jig- saw puzzles You are a lovely, lovely aunt!” and she held out her ar with pleasure at the success of her surprise, ”I re-saws, so yesterday, as soon as you had fallen asleep, I wired to Hamley's I was not sure if it would arrive to-day, so I did not tell you Now, let us see what it is--a map! Oh, dear me, I hope you won't find a -saws almost as much as Mollie did, had drawn up a substantial table to the sofa and seated herself beside it
”Dull!” she said reprovingly, ”I hope not indeed Maps are thepuzzles one can have What is it aa very jagged section upon the table and studying it with interest ”What funny names--Weeah! Where's that? It sounds like China”
Grannie had also possessed herself of a section, and was scrutinizing it through her spectacles ”I'll need lass, Mary, my dear,” she said; ”my old eyes cannot see this tiny print”
A silver-handled reading-glass was brought, and Grannie considered her section again: ”The Yarra,” she read out, ”I wonder if you can tell me where the Yarra is, Mollie?”
”Never heard of it,” said Mollie, shaking her head ”Yankalilla
Where's that? Goolad I auard in this place, wherever it may be”
”Aha, Miss Mollie, I ae examinations!” Grannie exclaimed triumphantly, ”for I can tell you where the Yarra is--it is the river upon which Melbourne is built, and Melbourne is the capital of Victoria, and Victoria is a colony in Australia”
”Australia!” Mollie exclai!” It was certainly rather odd, she thought, that her difficulty should be solved so proht ask as many questions as she pleased and no one would wonder at her sudden interest in our distant colonies In the rossed in the puzzle to notice the rather peculiar expression on Mollie's face, and soon she too becaot for the er puzzle in her , the first thing she saw on it was a letter from dick She seized it and tore it open
”DEAR MOLL,
”I've had the ru Outrahosts, you know He says I must tell you _exactly_ what happened and not leave out anything, because quite s Outrahosts and Spirits, he says it is because he was born in the East It happened like this YO and ether at our desk, which is at the back beside theIt is a very good desk Old Nosey was talking about _Macbeth_--or perhaps it was _Paradise Lost,_ I am not sure of this point, because so to the mood he is in
But it was one of the a list of Probable Players in next term's 1st XV, and we both said 'Jenkyns will have left', at the sa, and ishi+ng a hen all of a sudden, _without the slightest warning_ there appeared, sitting on _our desk,_ the most absolutely top-hole parrot I ever saw in , because, you see, we never saw the beast fly in, and if it flew through the e _ on the -sill While ere still staring I _distinctly_ heard your voice say, 'Do come here, dick' Just those words and then no , though it was the finest parrot's tail I ever saw inyou like that YO said ot almost pale under the discovery that none of the other chaps had seen the parrot, in fact they say it is a cock-and-bull story, but we are sitting tight because of the phyc-thingu O says that whatever it is he has to be in it too, because hostiness thatit at all I don't quite agree, but anyhow that's what he says, and he'd better be in Please write by return of post if you can explain this phenomenon We hope you aren't dead
”Yours affec,
”dick”
Mollie read this letter through twice, then laid it down and ate her egg and toast without thinking ain; things were certainly queerish Either her vivid dream had penetrated to dick's brain--and such experiences were not altogether unknown between the twins--or else--or else Prudence really _had_ co in that story of the Time-travellers So the experiment had worked too
She remembered the brilliant parrot