"What is, then, Kingsley?" asked Mr. Loveday, still very grave.
"The question is, whether you are going to ask me to stay to breakfast with you."
Mr. Loveday brightened; there was something contagious in the young man's gay spirits.
"I invite you, Kingsley," he said.
"Thank you, sir; I am famished, Nansie."
Standing upon the wooden steps, she turned and gazed fondly at her father and her husband, and as her bright eyes shone upon them there issued from a thicket of trees a most wonderful chorus of birds. And Mr. Loveday, quoting from his favorite poet, said:
"'See, the spring
Is the earth enamelling,
And the birds on every tree
Greet the morn with melody.'"
And Nansie, going slowly into the caravan, thought that life was very sweet and the world very beautiful.
[CHAPTER IV.]
On the evening of the following day Kingsley arrived at his father's house in London. It was situated in the centre of fashion, and had been built by the rich contractor himself upon part of a freehold which he had purchased upon terms so advantageous that, as he was in the habit of boasting, his own mansion "stood him in next to nothing," occasionally adding that he could find a purchaser for it at a day's notice for seventy-five thousand pounds. He was fond of dealing in large sums even in figures of speech, and he was to some extent justified in this habit by the circumstances of his career.