You poor dears!" murmured Auntie Alice, throwing tender arms around
their little white-gowned forms.

"Who allowed you to come downstairs at this time in the morning?"
demanded Aunt Catharine, eyeing the pair severely over the rims of her
spectacles; "and in your night-clothes, too! 'Pon my word!"

Then Darby knew that his dream had been no dream, but a sad reality, and
father was, in very truth, gone! So drawing Joan along with him
up-stairs, they both cuddled into Darby's bed, where, clasped in each
other's arms, they sobbed themselves to sleep again.

* * * * *

Firgrove was a charming old place. It had belonged to the Turners for
generations; but as Aunt Catharine and Auntie Alice were the last of the
family, after them it would come to Captain Dene. The house had
originally been a square eight-roomed cottage, built of plain gray
stone; but one Turner after another had, either for convenience or
display, added a wing here, a story there, until it had been turned into
a handsome, roomy residence. From the outside it looked rather
picturesque, with windows framed in ivy, clematis and wistaria peeping
out of the most unexpected places, chimney-stalks shooting up from the
least likely corners. Inside, the same surprises awaited one. No two
rooms were similar in size, scarcely any exactly the same in shape.
There were passages here, recesses there; steps leading down to this
apartment, up to that; with curtained doors and draperies in such
abundance that the children found within their shelter the most
delightful hiding-places imaginable. And many a romp and game they had,
in which once in a while Auntie Alice joined, when Aunt Catharine was
not anywhere about to be disturbed by the noise or shocked at her
sister's levity.

Out of doors there were other delights which Darby and Joan at first
felt they could never exhaust. In the stable Billy, the fat pony,
munched and snoozed every day and all day long, except when occasionally
he was harnessed into the basket-carriage to take the aunties for a
drive, or ambled into the meadow, where Strawberry and Daisy, the
meek-eyed Alderney cows, browsed at will over the sweet, juicy
after-grass. There were big, soft-breasted Aylesbury ducks on the pond,
fowls in the yard, pigeons in the dovecot so tame that they would perch
on Auntie Alice's shoulder and peck the grains of corn from between her
lips; and up in the loft above the stable there lived