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"One morning at the breakfast-table, my grand-aunt announced that she had had a most peculiar dream during the previous night. My father, who was always very interested in that kind of thing, took down in his notebook all the particulars concerning it. They were as follows.
'I am not a rich man, said the major, with that strain it always cost him to speak of himself, 'but I have got enough to live on. A goodish old house, and a small estate, underlet as it is, bringing me about two thousand a year, and some expectations, as they call them, from an old grand-aunt.
From the lagoon rose a damp sea-breeze. What was it all? Ah! I began to understand: that story of old Count Alvise's, the death of his grand-aunt, Pisana Vendramin. Yes, it was about that I had been dreaming. I returned to my room; I struck a light, and sat down to my writing-table. Sleep had become impossible. I tried to work at my opera.
"She had found the secret of totally ruining Baireuth," says Wilhelmina; "Baireuth, and Courland as well, where her first wedlock was;" perhaps Meiningen was done to her hand? Here is the Portrait of "my Grand-Aunt;" dashed off in very high colors, not by a flattering pencil: "It is said she was very fond of pleasing, in her youth; one saw as much still by her affected manners.
This was Miss Adams, Dorothy's grand-aunt, and called Auntie Adams by all the children who visited her. They all tumbled out of the sleigh, and ran laughing into the house. Each was greeted by Miss Adams, and cries of "Where's Ponto?" and "Oh, here's Polly!" and "Hello, Tabby," were heard.
He might have been excused if he was proud of his boy, for he was a noble little fellow, a "braw chiel," as he was pronounced to be by his grand-aunt, Mistress Tibbie Mactavish, who had presided at his birth, and likely to do no discredit to the name of Murray.
Finally, a story, of course containing plenty about his illustrious family: "My great grand-aunt, the Procuratessa Vendramin, from whom we have inherited our estate of Mistra, on the Brenta" a hopelessly muddled story, apparently, fully of digressions, but of which that singer Zaffirino is the hero.
Soon after his father died, the family property was sold and the family scattered; some went to Australia, some to Canada; but L'Estrange had inherited a hundred a year from a grand-aunt, and he lived on that, and what he made by writing in the newspapers, for of course no one had thought of intrusting him with a brief; and what he made by journalism varied from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty a year.
"In plain terms," answered Bucklaw, "because I am a fool, who have gambled away my land in thse times. My grand-aunt, Lady Girnington, has taen a new tack of life, I think, and I could only hope to get something by a change of government.
So peace to the maiden aunt's ashes, and to those of her absurd kings, for I owe them something after all. And I keep grateful memory of that unknown grand-aunt, for what she did in training my dear mother, the tenderest, sweetest, proudest, purest of women.
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