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Updated: June 27, 2025
"The Misses and Masters Plumstead," announced the butler, throwing open the door with the grand flourish which was worth at least ten pounds a year to him in salary. Nealie and Ducky entered first, followed by Rupert, walking alone, then came Sylvia and Rumple, while Don and Billykins brought up the rear. Mr.
Mindful of this fact, Billykins was trying to divert her attention by talking very fast about what he had seen; but twisting his head round to see if the maimed stranger was leaving the gardens or taking the other path which led by a picturesque bridge round to the other entrance to the tearooms, he was surprised to see him stop and speak to Mr. Wallis, who was walking behind with Don.
It was at this moment that Nealie leaned forward to whisper to Rupert, who sat on the other side of Don and Billykins: "Would it not be lovely for us all to go? Just think how we could help dear Father, and he would not be lonely any more."
Nealie and Don sang duets, to which Rupert played accompaniments on the banjo, while Ducky and Billykins led the applause, and Sylvia posed as audience, aping the languid, bored look of a fine lady at a concert with such inimitable mimicry that she came in for nearly as much applause as the proper performers from such of the other passengers as gathered round to hear.
Don and Billykins made up their minds to be sailors long before they were out of the Thames, and although they changed their minds when they got a terrific tossing in the Bay of Biscay, their bearing was strictly nautical right through the voyage.
Rumple felt considerably ruffled by this remark, which was not strictly true, for he was not really a little boy now, at least not compared with Don and Billykins, and he certainly could not be accused of running about when he was merely leaning against the garden fence and looking into the cowyard.
His ideas of distance were rather vague, and he had an impression that half an hour's brisk walking from the docks at Cape Town would have landed him on the top of the mountain. "No, we won't tell the captain, we certainly won't," put in Billykins, with a mutinous look on his chubby face.
Wallis, and was going to expound the art of money making still further when there came a sudden interruption from Billykins. "Can't you talk about something else, please? You have made Nealie cry by going on so about that one-armed man. She never can bear to talk about them, and you didn't see that she did not like it," he said in a shrill and very aggrieved tone.
She was very much of a child, despite her nineteen years, and she never seemed able to understand that her father was not at the top of his profession. "Father is very much like Rumple, only, of course, bigger," broke in Billykins, who could never be reduced to silence for many minutes together nor yet be thrust into the background.
For a few minutes there was great competition between Don and Billykins for the privilege of sucking Ducky's fists clean of marmalade, and, the comical side of the picture presenting itself to the little girl, she laughed as much as Nealie; then Sylvia joined in, and at length they were all making the best of things, groping in the dark for lumps of sugar and dabs of marmalade, until they lighted on some that had uncomfortably mixed itself up with the pepper, when a chorus of ohs! and ahs! sounded from the group of explorers, and everyone immediately decided that they had had enough marmalade for the present.
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