“Was,” I said, before I could help it. They looked at me in surprise; and I told them, in my turn, what had happened just after midnight in the tower. I missed out some of it, though—I said that their uncle had had an apoplectic fit and died at once. They listened without speaking, without moving, without taking their eyes from my face. And when I’d finished, they said nothing, but looked down at the floor; and Lucy said in a small voice, “We are alone, then.”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Ma loudly. “You’ll always have a welcome here, my dears! You don’t think we’d turn you out and wave good-bye, do you?”

“It ain’t as simple as that, ma’am, begging your pardon,” said Max. “See, being an orphan meself, and in the profession, like, I know a bit about it. If there’s no relations living, they’ll have to go into an orphanage. That’s the law. But they ain’t bad places,” he went on, turning to the girls. “We had a rare old time in Geneva when I was a lad. We used to play ’em up something terrible, those old biddies who ran the place. There was one time—”

“Hush, Maxie,” said Eliza. “We’ll think about all that later. When’s this contest going to start?” she asked Ma, trying to sound bright and cheery, and not really succeeding. Lucy had tears in her eyes, but she blinked them back and pretended to be interested in the contest, too, and Charlotte was too tired to feel anything.

“Oh!” said Max suddenly. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but have you got such a thing as a dried pea?”

And that broke the tension and made us laugh, and Ma said of course she had and how many did he want? And he said, just one, thank you very much, which sounded even odder. So she fetched it for him, and he tried to pay for it but she wouldn’t take anything—how can you take money for one dried pea?—and then we all seemed to be getting ready to go out.