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"But you are sorry sometimes, grampa, not to have me with you?" "Yes, Aggie, very sorry. I miss you terribly sometimes, and I am always thinking about you." "Then why don't you take me away again, grampa?" "Because, as I told you, Aggie, I want you to learn to read, and to grow up quite a little lady." "Does reading make one a lady, grampa?" "No, Aggie, not by itself, but with other things."
"Oh, I have such good news to tell you! Grandpapa is so good and kind, and grampa is going to live with us, and you are to come up, too, and James is to go to school. Isn't it all splendid?" "What are you talking about, Aggie?" Mrs. Walsham asked, bewildered, as the child poured out her news. "Aggie is too fast, madam," the squire said, entering the room accompanied by the sergeant.
Don't you remember the essay I sent you the one I sold to The Florentine last winter?" "Essay? You never sent me any essay." "Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it." Adam Patch shook his head mildly. "Oh, no. You never sent me any essay. You may have thought you sent it but it never reached me." "Why, you read it, Grampa," insisted Anthony, somewhat exasperated, "you read it and disagreed with it."
And so it was arranged, and in his walk with Aggie, afterwards, the sergeant told her the history of her parents, and that Squire Linthorne was her other grandfather, and that she was to go up and see him that evening. Aggie had uttered her protest against fate. She did not wish to leave her grampa who had been so good to her, and Mrs. Walsham, and James.
"And I go walks with Jim, grampa, and Jim has made me a boat, and he says someday, when it is very fine and quiet, he will take me out in a big boat, like that boat, you know; and he is going to ask you if he may, for the lady said I must not go out with him till he has asked you. And he said he won't let me tumble over, and I am going to sit quite, quite still."
"And when I am quite grown up and big, and know how to read nicely, shall I be able to go with you again?" "We will see about that, Aggie, when the time comes. There is plenty of time yet to think about that." "But I am getting on very fast, grampa, and the lady says I am a good girl. So it won't be such a very long time before I can leave." "It will be some time, yet.
Turning to the left, the sergeant took the path up the hill, and when he reached the top, sat down on the short turf, with Aggie nestling up against him. "So you are quite well and happy, Aggie?" he asked. "Quite well, grampa, and very happy; but I do wish so much that you were here. Oh. it would be so nice to have you to go out with every day!" "I am afraid that cannot be managed, Aggie.
He told me I was to come because you were lonely. "But you can't be more lonely than he is," she said, with a quiver in her voice. "Oh! he will be lonely, now!" "But where do you come from, my dear? and how did you get here? and what have you been doing, all these years?" "Grampa brought me here," the child said.
Aggie shook her head, to show that this part of the programme was not particularly to her liking. "Do you think the boy will play with me, grampa?" "I daresay he will, Aggie, when you are very good; and you must never forget, you know, that he saved your life. Just think how unhappy I should be, if he had not got you out of the water."
"Oh! my child! my child! have you come at last?" and he drew her towards him, and kissed her passionately, while the tears streamed down his cheeks. "I couldn't come before, you know," the child said, "because I didn't know about you; and grampa, that's my other grandpapa," she nodded confidentially, "did not know you wanted me. But now he knows, he sent me to you.
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