“papa’s,” and as matter of course, therefore, crowded with everybody else’s litter, and where papa could seldom find anything of his.
“I wish I might have one seat in my own room,” said Mr. Lygon, affecting to grumble, and sweeping the pieces of a dissected puzzle of Joseph and his Brethren from the chair that seemed least choked up. “I told you, Master Walter, to see that the puzzle was put back into the box when done with.”
“Well, it’s Fred’s fault, papa,” replied Walter, of course.
“Oh, certainly,” said Mr. Lygon, seating himself.
He was going to make Walter pick up the pieces, before entering into further discussion, but the boy’s eager look at the waistcoat-pocket in which he supposed his new treasure to be, was almost affecting, and his father could not be hard-hearted.
“Now, about this knife,” he began gravely; but the boy’s arm was round Mr. Lygon’s neck in a moment.
“Yes, about the knife—out with it, papa.”
“Just you please to stay a moment, Master Walter. This makes the fifth knife since Christmas, and that won’t do.”
“No, pa, only the fourth.”
“Fifth, I tell you. There was the nice buckhorn one that your uncle Charles gave you.”
“Nice one! Pretty niceness! Why, I broke it the very same afternoon.”
“And whose fault was that, your uncle’s?”
“Yes, it was. He ought to have given me a stronger one. Why, didn’t you tell me I ought to make a boat, and didn’t the blade fly away as I was cutting one?”
“I did not tell you to cut boats with a penknife. But I remember I then bought you a beauty, white handle and three blades, sir.”
“Yes, that was a beauty. I hope you’ve bought me another like it.”
“Indeed, no. But where did that go to?”
“Well, there was a hole in my pocket, and I suppose it went through that.”
“Your mamma gave you another.”
“Oh, a girl’s thing! little bits of blades no bigger than that,” showing a thumb-nail that might have been cleaner. “I gave it to Lizzie Park, the day we went on the water, and she gave me a gimblet, for good luck.”
“And where did the young lady get a gimblet, pray?”
“Out of her papa’s box of tools, I suppose. I’ve got it in my pocket now.”
“Then please to take it out of your pocket, and put it in a proper place. Now, Master Walter, about number four? Did you not take my own desk knife, from this very inkstand?”
“Oh, ah!” returned Walter, convicted but not convinced. “I don’t call that a knife.”
“What do you call it—a fork?”
“No,” said Walter, with one of those spirts of laughter that reward you for saying something utterly ridiculous to a child. “But you can’t call that a knife—it don’t shut.”
It was now his father’s turn to laugh, and to hand over the brown Wharncliffe he had brought down. Walter was more than delighted—all the advantages of the beautiful lost white knife, with the manly character of the brown handle—perfect. He gave his father a violent hug, and a kiss which, hastily directed anywhere, fell on the parent’s ear, and then the boy dashed off, proclaiming that he must show his prize to mamma.
“Mamma is dressing for dinner,” his father cried after him. “She don’t want you.”
“Oh, she always wants me,” was the answering shout, as Walter tore up the stairs three at a time.
Mr. Lygon looked into the dining-room. The table was laid for three, as usual—for himself and Mrs. Lygon, and for Miss Clara, who was permitted to complete the party, though an early dinner with her school-boy brothers, Walter and Fred, made her attendance almost honorary. But papa liked to see his little lady at the dinner-table, and Mrs. Lygon had a curious and unfeminine habit of complying with all his whims.
His wife’s portrait, a rather large oil-painting, hung over the mantelpiece, and his eye caught a card put between the painting and the frame.
“I wonder who did that,” said Mr. Lygon. discontent. “I have said a dozen times that I will not have things stuck there.” And he took out the offensive card, and looked at it.
“‘Mr. Ernest Adair,’” he read. “I don’t know the name, do I? Ernest Adair—no—I’ve heard of Robin, but Laura knows, I suppose.” And as the making even so slight an alteration as the removing a card from a picture will often cause you to look earnestly at the work itself, though it has hung before you for years, Arthur Lygon paused for a moment or two and gazed on the likeness of his wife.
A beautiful face, with a mass of dark hair in clustered curls,—a forehead lower than painters care to draw, except those painters who comprehend that the best type of womanhood is not found with the traditional high brow,—an expression of stillness, perhaps verging on sternness, and something that spoke of troubles confronted, perhaps of sufferings endured. And yet the face was loveable, and the violet eyes were tender. For the rest, a delicate throat, a white full shoulder, and rounded and graceful arms. The figure was seated, and in one of the faultless hands—almost too small—was a rosary of golden beads.
“She is handsomer now than she was then,” said the husband, with a determined expression, as if of defiance to all who might doubt whether the mother of three children could excel in beauty a lovely-looking girl of nineteen.
“She is, though,” he added, with an affirmation which, as there was a happy smile on his lips, and a world of affection in his heart, was not, let us hope, laid to his charge. “In the first place, she is happier, and”
He left the room, and the next minute his little Clara bounded into his arms, if not with as much energy as her brother’s, with quite as much delight, and as her luxuriant hair, dark as her mother’s, shaded his face, she murmured her words of fondness.
“Dear, dear papa,” she said, kissing him over and over again.
And no sooner was she dismissed, than there