e found one for you. How would 'Auntie' do?"

Tom and Racey stared, but I, being so much older, of course understood.
To Uncle Geoff's surprise I jumped up into his arms and kissed him.

"Oh, Uncle Geoff," I cried, "oh, _what_ a good plan! Is she really our
auntie now?"

"_Really_," said Uncle Geoff, "that's to say, she's been your stupid old
uncle's wife for a fortnight."

Then the boys understood too. But Racey looked rather disconsolate. "I
thought," he said, "Miss Doldy-hair was doin' to mally _me_."

But in the end he too thought it a very good plan, when he found that
our new auntie was really going to live with us always. And I think one
of the things that helped to please him _quite_ was the discovery of a
beautiful air-garden, which Uncle Geoff had had built out of one of the
drawing-room windows for Miss Goldy-hair's pet plants.

* * * * *

Papa and mother have come home since then, for, as I told you, all these
things happened a very long time ago--five whole years ago.

And we are, I think, the happiest children in the whole world, for we
have not only our own dear mother, but our own dear auntie too--the
auntie who was so good and kind to us when we were forlorn and
misunderstood, and might so easily have got into naughty ways; and who
taught us to be--or at least to try to be--all our dear mother hoped. We
live very near Uncle Geoff's, for papa got to be something more clever
still when he came back from China, and had to give up living in the
country. We were rather sorry for that, but still perhaps we enjoy it
all the more when we go there in the summer. And I have an air-garden of
my own, which would be very nice if the boys wouldn't try experiments on
the plants in the holidays.

And you have _no idea_ how fond mother and auntie are of each other, and
how often we all talk over how the boys and I found our dear Miss
Goldy-hair that rainy evening when we lost our way in the London
streets.

THE END.

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