"Never!" I answer energetically; "but tell me, what does your father do? Does he expect you to talk? Does he insist on your going out walking with him, all the lot of you, except your mother?"
"I have no mother," he says soberly, "and no brothers or sisters. No, he does not make me walk unless I please; but I am his walking-stick, his pourer-out of medicine, his lacquey (rather bitterly), who wanders all over the world with him, learning no good."
"Learning no good!" I repeat. (I was always rather like a monkey, and fond of echoing other folks' words.) "Have you not a profession? Do you not do anything? You are old enough!"
"Ay!" he says, and a sudden shadow falls upon his blonde, bright face. "I was to have gone into the army, and even had my commission in the Guards, but at the last moment my father refused to let me join. He said I was his only son, that he could not live many years, and so (with a short, impatient sigh) I am knocking about with nothing on earth to do. If only Providence had sent me one or two of your brothers!"
"I have six," I say proudly; "there are five running after Dolly, but I could not spare one of them to you."
"I suppose not," he says, with a smile. "Do you ever smack their heads as you did my cheek this afternoon?"
"Sometimes! only to tell you the truth, they are getting rather beyond me. Were you angry when I slapped you this afternoon?"
"Very! I hope you will never do it again."
"But then you must never do it again."
"But I did not."
"If you were me," I say seriously, "you would be sick of the very name of kissing; we have such oceans of it at home!"
"Ah! I suppose so. Your father must be very fond of you all?"
"Very!" I say with a wry face, "but it is not he who is lavish
