"Oh, Uncle!" Sarah gasped, for to hear him speak so of the mother she had never seen, but whom she had been taught to love from her babyhood, was joy almost greater than her child’s heart could bear. "There, there! If aught goes wrong, come to me," Mr. Stubbs murmured. "And if you always speak to your aunt as you’ve done to-day, I shall think your pore father must have been a fine fellow, or you’d never be what you are." Oh, Sarah was so happy! After all, what could, what _did_ it matter if Flossie and Tom did call her Princess Sarah of Nowhere? Why, just nothing at all--nothing at all. "Uncle," she said, after a moment or two, "may I play you something on my violin?" "Yes," he answered. "That," remarked Mrs. Stubbs, as Sarah opened the piano and began to tune up in a way which made her uncle open his eyes with astonishment, "is the fiddle Sarah says is worth five hundred pounds." "Like enough. Some of ’em are," he answered. And then Sarah played a German _lied_ and a Hungarian dance; then "Home, Sweet Home." "Well," said Mrs. Stubbs, looking at him, when she ceased, "what do you think of it?" "I think she’s--a genius," answered Mr. Stubbs. CHAPTER X A PLEASANT RAILWAY JOURNEY On the Thursday following the whole Stubbs family went to Brighton. Sarah enjoyed the journey intensely, journeys being still almost a novelty with her. She would have enjoyed it more if May had not grumbled at going second-class, and if Flossie and Tom had not vied with one another in trying how far they could lean out of either window of the carriage. Poor Miss Clark was almost beside herself with fright. "Tom, put your head in immediately," she cried in desperation, and expecting every moment to see the door fly open and Tom shoot out headlong, to be picked up a mangled corpse or in actual fragments. "Tom, do you hear me? Tom, I insist upon it." But if Miss Clark had shouted till she had killed herself with shouting, Tom, leaning half his body out of the window, with the wind whistling in his ears and the roar and rattle of the engine and wheels all helping to deaden any such small sounds as that of a human voice, and that the voice of a weak and rather helpless woman, could not have heard her, and Miss Clark had no choice but, with May’s help, to tug Tom in by the nether part of his garments. This done, she pulled up the window with a jerk. [Illustration: Tom leaning half his body out of the window with the wind whistling in his ears.] "I forbid you to open that window again," she said with such severity that even Tom was cowed, and sat meekly down with a somewhat sulky air.