Nancy | Page 3

send our two specimen ones," say I, again looking up, and indicating Barbara and Algy with my weapon, "our sample figs: if Sir Robert--Sir Robin--Sir Roger--what is he?--does not see the rest of us, he may perhaps imagine that we are all equally presentable, which would be more to your credit, mother, than if Bobby and Tou Tou and I were to be submitted to the poor old thing's notice."
Mother looks rather at sea.
"What are you talking about? What poor old thing? Oh! I understand."
"He will have to see us," says Tou Tou, rather lugubriously, "he cannot help it--at prayers."
Tou Tou has descended from the table, and is standing propped against mother's knee, twisting one leg with ingenious grace round the other.
"Bless your heart," says the Brat, comfortingly, "he will never find out that we are there: do you suppose that his blear old eyes will see all across that big room, economically lit up by one pair of candles?"
Mother smiles.
"Wait till you see whether he has blear eyes!"
"He must be very ancient," says Algy, in all the insolence of twenty, leaning his flat back against the mantel-shelf, "as he was at school with father."
"Father has not blear eyes," remarks Bobby, dryly. "Would God he had! For then perhaps he would not see our little vices quite so clearly with them as he does."
"But then father has not been in India," retorts Algy, stretching. "India plays the deuce with one's organs and appurtenances."
"I wish you joy of him," say I, rising flushed and untidy from my knees, having successfully smashed the taffy into little bits; "from soup to walnuts, you will have to undergo a ceaseless tyranny of tales about hitmaghars and dak bungalows and Choto Lazery: which of us has not suffered in our day from the horrible monotony of ideas of an old Indian?"
"Never you mind, Barbara!" cries the Brat, giving her a sounding brotherly pat on the back. "Pay no attention to her."
"'What great events from trivial causes spring!' as the poet says: you may live to bless the day that old Roger Crossed our doors."
"As how?" says Barbara, laughing, and rocking herself backward and forward in a veteran American rocking-chair which, at different periods of our history, has served most of us the dirty turn of tipping us over, and presenting us reversed to the eyes of our family.
"Never you mind," repeats the Brat, oracularly; "truth is stranger than fiction! odd things happen: I read in the paper the other day of a man who pulled up the window for an old woman in the train, and she died at once--I do not mean on the spot, but very soon after, and when she died --listen, please, all of you--" (speaking very slowly and impressively) --"she left him two thousand pounds a year."
"I wish I saw the application," answers Barbara, still rocking and sighing.
"Mind that you set a stool for his gouty foot," says Algy, feeling for his faint mustache, "and run and search for his spectacle-case, when he has mislaid it."
"Seriously," say I, "what a grand thing it would be for the family if he were to adopt you, Barbara!"
"Or me," suggests the Brat, standing before the fire with his coat-tails under his arm. "Why not me? My manners to the aged are always considered particularly happy."
"Here he is!" cries Tou Tou from the window, whither she has retired, and now stands, like a heron, on one leg, leaning her elbow on the sill. "Here is the dog-cart turning the corner!"
We all make a rush to the casement.
"Yes, there he is! sure enough! our future benefactor!" says Algy, looking over the rest of our heads, and making a counterfeit greeting.-- "Welcome, welcome, good old man!"
"And father, all affability, pointing out the house," supplements Bobby.
We laugh grimly.
"But who is it he has in the fly?" say I, as the second vehicle follows the first. "His harem, I suppose! half a dozen old Wampoos."
"His valet, to be sure," replies the Brat, chidingly, "with his stays, and his evening wig, and the calves of his legs."
CHAPTER II.
The wind is even colder than it was, stronger and more withering now that the sun's faint warmth is withdrawn, and that the small and chilly stars possess the sky. Nevertheless, both the school-room windows are open. We are all huddled shivering round the hearth, yet no one talks of closing them. The fact is, that amateur cooking, though a graceful accomplishment, has its penalties, and that at the present moment the smell of broiled bones and fried potatoes that fills our place of learning is something appalling. Why may not it penetrate beneath the swing-door, through the passages, and reach the drawing-room? Such a thing has happened once or twice before. At the bare thought we all quake. I am in