Then Jerry jumped up and said:
"We ought to drink to the Bottle Man, _I_ think. And, by the way,
'Bottle Man' looks all right in a letter, but it's queer, rather, to
say to you. Haven't you really a real name?"
Our man and Aunt Ailsa looked at each other as if they were going to
say something, and then the Bottle Man twinkled, and said:
"Very soon you'll be able to call me Uncle Andrew."
This part seems to be nothing but explanations, which are horrid,
but there _were_ lots, and I can't help it. Of course Jerry and I
sat staring in surprise, and there _had_ to be explanations. And
what do you think! Our own Bottle Man was that "Somebody Westland"
that Aunt Ailsa had wept so about. The casualty list was perfectly
right in saying that he was wounded and missing (though it came very
late, because by that time he was in America), and she thought, of
course, that he was dead, because she didn't hear from him. And he'd
written to her from the French hospital and the letter never came.
When he came back, all sick and wounded, to America, somebody who
didn't know anything about it told him that Aunt Ailsa was going to
marry Mr. Something-or-other, so our poor man went off sadly to his
island and didn't write to her any more. He'd never heard of us,
because of course her name isn't Holford. And _she'd_ never heard of
his aunt, nor Blue Harbor, nor the island, so of course she didn't
know anything about it when we read his letters to her.
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