Bressant | Page 7

Will that give you time enough to make yourself fine?"
"Now, papa, you're making fun of me," exclaimed the young lady, delighted that he should be in the humor to do so, yet speaking in that semi-reproachful tone which ladies sometimes adopt when the other sex makes their costume the object of remark, "I can make myself as fine as I can be by that time, of course! But how is it about Sophie? Won't she be able to go too?"
Papa shook his head, and combed his bristly white beard with his fingers. "Sophie has been very ill," said he; "it wouldn't be safe to have her go anywhere this summer. We can't take too much care of her. Typhoid pneumonia is a dangerous thing, and though she's on the way to recovery now, she might easily relapse. And then," added the old gentleman, in a more inward tone, "she would recover no more."
Although he mumbled this sentence to himself, Cornelia caught his meaning, more, probably, from his manner than from any thing she heard; and being of an emotional and warmly-tender disposition, she began to cry. She loved her sister very much; and something must also be allowed to the fact that, having a great happiness in prospect for herself, she could afford to expend more sympathy on those less fortunate. As for the professor, he, for a second time that afternoon, gave evidence of possessing disgracefully little control over himself. He began another fruitless search after his handkerchief, and finally asked Cornelia, with some heat, whether she knew what had become of it.
"Why, it's on your head, papa!" warbled she, brightly changing a laugh for her tears; and papa, putting up his hand in great confusion, and finding that it was indeed so, laughed also, and this time in a perfectly natural manner; but he blew his nose very resoundingly, for all that.
The atmosphere being serene once more, the joy of the future became again strong in Cornelia's heart, and coupled with it, an earnest longing to disburden herself to some one, and who but her sister should be her confidant? So she rose from her knees, and picked up her brown straw hat, which, in the excitement, had fallen to the floor.
"Is there any thing you'd like to do, papa dear?" asked she, laying her forefinger caressingly upon his bald head. "Because if there isn't, I, I should like--I think I'd better go to Sophie."
Professor Valeyon nodded his head, being in truth desirous of taking solitary counsel with himself. The letter contained a good deal more than the invitation he had communicated to Cornelia, and he could not feel at ease until he had more thoroughly analyzed and digested it. So when his daughter had vanished through the door, with a smile and a kiss of the hand, he mounted his spectacles again, and spread the letter open on his knee.
After reading a while in silence, he spoke; though his voice was audible only to his own mental ears.
"There was a time," said he, "when I wouldn't have believed I could ever hear the news of that man's death, and take it so quietly! And now he sends me his son!--as it were bequeaths him to me. Can it be as a hostage for forgiveness, though so late? or is it merely because he knew I could not but feel a vital interest in the boy, and would instruct and treat him as my own? He was a shrewd judge of human nature--and yet, I must not judge him harshly now."
Here Professor Valeyon happened again to catch sight of his slipper, and interrupted his soliloquy to extend his stockinged toe, fork it toward himself, and having, with some trouble, got it right side uppermost, to put it on. And then he referred once more to the letter.
"I should like to know whether he was aware that Abbie was here, or that she was alive at all! Margaret says nothing about it in her letter. If he did, of course he must have written to her, or, if he was determined to die as for these last twenty years and more he has lived, he would never knowingly have sent the boy where she was, on any consideration. Well, well, I can easily find out how that is, from either Abbie or the boy. By-the-way, I wonder whether this incognito of his may have any thing to do with it? Hum! Margaret says it's only so that he may not be interrupted in his studies by acquaintances. Well, that's likely enough--that's likely enough!"
"By-the-way, where's the young man to stay? At Abbie's, of course, if--Margaret says, at some good boarding-house. Well, Abbie's is the only one in town. It's a singular coincidence, certainly, if it is a coincidence! Perhaps I'd