ancy friends'
family connections. We need not go quite so far as _that_, but I will
explain to you about these new little friends of yours enough for you to
be able to find out the rest for yourselves.

They had never seen their grandmother before, never, that is to say, in
the girls' case, and in Ralph's "not to remember her." Ralph was fourteen
now, Sylvia thirteen, and Molly about a year and a half younger. More
than seven years ago their mother had died, and since then they had been
living with their father, whose profession obliged him often to change
his home, in various different places. It had been impossible for their
grandmother, much as she wished it, to have had them hitherto with her,
for, for several years out of the seven, her hands, and those of aunty,
too, her only other daughter besides their mother, had been more than
filled with other cares. Their grandfather had been ill for many years
before his death, and for his sake grandmother and aunty had left the
English home they loved so much, and gone to live in the south of France.
And after his death, as often happens with people no longer young, and
somewhat wearied, grandmother found that the old dream of returning
"home," and ending her days with her children and old friends round her,
had grown to be but a dream, and, what was more, had lost its charm. She
had grown to love her new home, endeared now by so many associations; she
had got used to the ways of the people, and felt as if English ways would
be strange to her, and as aunty's only idea of happiness was to find it
in hers, the mother and daughter had decided to make their home where for
nearly fourteen years it had been. They had gone to England this autumn
for a few weeks, finally to arrange some matters that had been left
unsettled, and while there something happened which made them very glad
that they had done so. Mr. Heriott, the children's father, had received
an appointment in India, which would take him there for two or three
years, and though grandmother and aunty were sorry to think of his going
so far away, they were--oh, I can't tell you how delighted! when he
agreed to their proposal, that the children's home for the time should be
with them. It would be an advantage for the girls' French, said
grandmother, and would do Ralph no harm for a year or two, and if his
father's absence lasted longer, it could easily be arranged for him to
be sent back to England to school, still spendin