Jasmine,

Your Uncle Hector and I have decided that it would be best for you to leave Italy at once. Even if your father's finances had left you independent, we should never have consented to your staying on by yourself in such a place as Sirene. Your uncle was astonished that you should even contemplate such a course of action, but as it is, without a penny, you yourself must surely see the impossibility of remaining there. Your plan of teaching English to the natives sounds to me ridiculous, and your plan of teaching Italian to English visitors equally ridiculous. I once had an Italian woman of excellent family to read Dante with Lettice and Pamela during some Easter holidays we once spent in Florence, and I distinctly remember that her bill after three weeks was something under a sovereign. At the time I remember it struck me as extremely moderate, but I did not then suppose that a niece of mine would one day seriously contemplate earning a living by such teaching. No, the proper course for you is to come to England at once. Your uncle has received a letter from the lawyer (written, by the way, in most excellent English, a proof that if the local residents wish to learn English they can do so already) to say that when the furniture, books, and clothes belonging to your father have been sold, there will probably be enough to pay his debts, and I know it will be a great satisfaction to you to feel that. The cost of your journey to England your Uncle Hector is anxious to pay himself, and the lawyer has been instructed to make the necessary arrangement about your ticket. You will travel second class as far as London, and from London to Spaborough, where we shall be spending August, you had better travel third. The lawyer will be sent enough money to telegraph what day we may expect you. Grant, Strathspey House, Spaborough, is sufficient address. We have had a great family council about your future, and I know you will be touched to hear how anxious all your uncles and aunts have been to help you. But your Uncle Hector has decided that for the present at any rate you had better remain with us. How lucky it is that you should be arriving just when we shall be in a bracing seaside place like Spaborough, for after all these years in the South you must be sadly in need of a little really good air. Besides, you will find us all in holiday mood, just what you require after the sad times through which you have passed. Later on, when we go back to town, I daresay I shall be able to find many little ways in which you can be useful to me, for naturally we do not wish you to feel that we are encouraging you to be lazy, merely because we do not happen to approve of your setting up for yourself as a teacher of languages. By the way, your uncle is not Dr. Grant any longer. Indeed he hasn't been Dr. Grant for a long time. Didn't your father tell you even when he was knighted? But he is now a baronet, and you should write to him as Sir Hector Grant, Bt. Not Bart. Your uncle dislikes the abbreviation Bart. And to me, of course, as Lady Grant, not Mrs. Grant.

Love from us all,     
Your affectionate   
Aunt May.

The few tears that Jasmine let fall upon the blue notepaper were swallowed up in the rivulets of the watermark. Although she was on her way to meet this uncle and aunt and to be received by them as one of the family, she felt more lonely than ever, and hurriedly laying the envelope beside her on the bench, she dipped into the bag for another letter.

Jasmine tried to remember what her father had said at different times about his second brother, but she could only recall that once in the middle of a conversation about Persian rugs he had said to Mr. Cazenove, "I have a brother in the East, poor chap," and that when Mr. Cazenove had asked him where, he had replied, "Constantinople or Jerusalem—some well-known place. He's in the consular service. Or he was." He had not seemed to be much interested in his brother's whereabouts or career. And then he had added meditatively, "He married a woman with a ridiculous name, poor creature. She was the daughter of somebody or other somewhere in the East." But her father was always vague like that about everything, and he always said "poor chap" about every man and "poor creature" about every woman. He had a kind and generous disposition, and therefore he felt everybody was to be pitied. Jasmine wished now that she had asked more about Uncle Eneas and Aunt Cuckoo. Cuckoo! Yes, it was a ridiculous name. Such a ridiculous name that it sounded as remote from reality as Rumplestiltzkin. No girl, however large the quantity of flax she must spin into gold before sunrise, could have guessed Aunt Cuckoo.

Jasmine was feeling that she ought not to be laughing at her father's relatives like this so soon after he had died, when suddenly she woke up to the fact that they were just as much, even more, her relatives too. It was like waking up on Monday morning during the year in which she was sent to school with the Sisters of the Seven Dolours in Naples and could only come back to Sirene for the week-ends. With a shudder she placed Aunt Cuckoo on the bench and picked up Aunt Mildred.