“David!” cried his sister, “David, this is my boy!” There was a wild appeal in her voice, almost breaking upon tears. “Edmund I have called him, after our father, David. Edmund, my treasure, speak to your uncle!”
“I will, if you put me down!” The three-year-old boy struggled to free himself from his mother’s embrace. His velvet cap fell off and a cherub face under deep red curls was revealed. Ellinor remembered how the Master of Lochore’s red head had flashed through these very halls in the old days, and she hardly dared glance at David.
“I’ll stand down on my own legs, please!” said the child. “And now I’ll speak.”
He shook out his ruffled petticoat and looked up, and his great, velvet brown eyes wandered from face to face. The genial ruddiness, the benevolent smile of the good, childless parson appealed to him first.
“Good morning, mine uncle, I hope you’ll learn to love——”
Lady Lochore plunged upon him.
“No, Edmund, no! not there! See boy, this is your uncle.”
She clutched at David’s sleeve, while Madam Tutterville’s tears of easy emotion ran into her melting smile; and quite unscriptural exclamations, such as “duck,” and “little pet,” and “lambkin” fell from her delighted lips.
“Speak to uncle David, darling! David, won’t you say a word to my child?”
Ellinor could almost have echoed the wail—it cut into her womanly heart to see David repel the little one. But he bent and looked down searchingly into the little face. At that moment the child, again struggling against the maternal control, drew his baby brows together and set his baby features into a scowl of temper. Sir David looked; and in the defiant eyes, in the little set mouth, in the very frown, saw the image of his traitor friend. His own brows gathered into as black a knot as if he had been confronting Lochore himself. He drew himself up and folded his arms: