"Yes, sir, he planed off his thumb when he was working on one of the benches for the stands through him looking round at a black fellow in a turban covered in jewelry who was driving to Buckingham Palace. One of the new arrivals, it was; and his arm got blood poisoning. That's how I remember it was Jubilee year, though usually I'm a terror for knowing when anything did occur. He wouldn't of minded so much, he said, only he was told it was the Char of Persia and that made him mad." "Why? What had he got against the Shah?" "He hadn't got nothing against the Char. But it wasn't the Char; and if he'd of known it wasn't the Char he never wouldn't of turned round so quick, and there's no saying he wouldn't of been alive to this day. No, sir, don't you worry about this governess. I dare say if she'd of come she'd only of caused a bit of unpleasantness all round." At the same time, John thought, when he sent for the children in order to make the announcement of Miss Coldwell's desertion, notwithstanding Mrs. Worfolk's optimism it was a pity that the first day of their visit should be a Sunday. "I'm sorry to say, Viola, and, of course, Bertram, this applies equally to you, that poor Miss Coldwell has been taken very ill." That strange expression upon the children's faces might be an awkward attempt to express their youthful sympathy, but it more ominously resembled a kind of gloating ecstacy, as they stood like two cherubs outside the gates of paradise, or two children outside a bunshop. "Very ill," John went on, "so ill indeed that it is feared she will not be able to come for a few days, and so...." Whatever more John would have said was lost in the riotous acclamations with which Bertram and Viola greeted the sad news. After the first cries and leaps of joy had subsided to a chanted duet, which ran somehow like this: "Oh, oh, Miss Coldwell, She can't come to Hampstead, Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, Miss Coldwell's not coming:" John ventured to rebuke the singers for their insensibility to human suffering. "For she may be dangerously ill," he protested. "How _fizzing_," Bertram shouted. "She might die." The prospect that this opened before Bertram was apparently too beautiful for any verbal utterance, and he remained open-mouthed in a mute and exquisite anticipation of liberty. "What and never come to us ever again?" Viola breathed, her blue eyes aglow with visions of a larger life. John shook his head, gravely. "Oh, Uncle John," she cried, "wouldn't that be glorious?" Bertram's heart was too full for words: he simply turned head over heels. "But you hard-hearted little beasts," their uncle expostulated. "She's most frightfully strict," Viola explained. "Yes, we shouldn't have been able to do anything decent if she'd come," Bertram added.