Uncle Mo really saw no substantial reason why this beautiful vision should not sweep Dolly upstairs, if it pleased her. He may have felt that a formal protest would be graceful, but he could not think of the right words. And Aunt M'riar had fallen through. Moreover, his memory was confident that he had left his bedroom-door shut. As to miscarriage of the expedition into Mrs. Prichard's territory, he had no misgiving. Miss Grahame was convinced that the incursion would have better results if she left it to its originator, than if she encumbered it with her own presence. After all, the room could be no larger than the one she sat in, and might be smaller. Anyhow, they could get on very well without her for half an hour. And she wanted a chat with Dave's guardians; she did not really know them intimately. "The two little ones must be almost like your own children to you, Mr. Wardle," said she, to broach the conversation. "Never had any, ma'am," said Uncle Mo, literal-minded from constitutional good-faith. "If you _had_ had any was what I meant." Perhaps the reason Miss Grahame's eye wandered after Aunt M'riar, who had followed Gwen and Dolly--to "see that things were straight," she said--was that she felt insecure on a social point. Uncle Mo's eye followed hers. "Nor yet M'riar," said he, seeing a precaution necessary. "Or perhaps I should say _one_. Not good for much, though! Born dead, I believe--years before ever my brother married her sister. Never set eyes on M'riar's husband! Name of Catchpole, I believe.... That's her coming down." He raised his voice, dropped to say this, as she came within hearing:--"Yes--me and M'riar we share 'em up, the two young characters, but we ain't neither of us their legal parents. Not strickly as the Law goes, but we've fed upon 'em like, in a manner of speaking, from the beginning, or nigh upon it. Little Dave, he's sort of kept me a-going from the early days, afore we buried his poor father--my brother David, you see. He died down this same Court, four year back, afore little Dolly was good for much, to look at.... They all right, M'riar?" "They're making a nice racket," said Aunt M'riar. "So I lay there ain't much wrong with _them_." She picked up a piece of work to go on with, and explored a box for a button to meet its views. Evidently a garment of Dolly's. Probably this was a slack season for the higher needlework, and the getting up of fine linen was below par.