Sawn Off: A Tale of a Family Tree

“Well, I’m—”
“Papa!”
“Hi! don’t, Very. Let me breathe,” cried Doctor Salado, removing a very pretty little hand from over his mouth, and kissing the owner, as pretty a little girl as ever stepped; though just then her pretty creamy face was puckered into the most lovable of dimples, and there was trouble in her great dark eyes, over which were lashes and brows as black as the great clusters and waves of luxuriant hair.
“You shall not.”
“I was only going to say ‘blessed.’”
“You were not, papa. You were going to use that dreadful word again.”
“So I was, Very, and enough to make me,” said the Doctor, passing his hand over his high bold forehead and crown. “Why, it completely cuts off our view of the park and the manor-house at the end of the beautiful vista of oaks.”
“Never mind, dear; we’ll take to the drawing-room, and look out at the back at the grand old pines.”
“Well, upon my soul,” said the Doctor again. “Of all the malicious bits of impudence! They must have been at it all night.”
“Yes, papa; I heard them knocking, and I could not sleep.”
“Hang me if I don’t take an axe and cut the old thing down,” cried the Doctor again, as he stood gazing out of his breakfast-room window at where—just across the road, and exactly opposite his delightful little cottage—half a dozen carpenters and labourers were rapidly completing a great range of hoarding fifty feet long and full twenty high.