“He! he!” giggled he, and held himself as if he were waiting to be told what to do next.
He was tall, it is true; and there was a good deal of him, mostly gnarled bone, if that counted to his credit. His forehead, streaked with dark hair turning grey, was strong and ample, and in itself something of a feature; but, mercy! the loose indetermination of his lower lip, and the way it overhung, foolish and disproportionate as an elephant’s, the little folded chin! As I stared, too mortified for manners, he returned my gaze, suddenly startled, it seemed, into a speechlessness so stertorous that little Patty, who had entered with and stood behind me, fell back a step in confusion.
“Ah!” he exclaimed at that, chuckling, “and is hee-ar the little girl I knew?”
He spoke, when he did at last, drawlingly, and ended, as was his way, by wrinkling his thin hooked nose and hee-hawing a little laugh through it.
“She is grown, is she not?” said madam, answering for Patty, to whom he had referred, though indeed his eyes were all the time on me. Her voice was so changed and soft, I hardly recognised it.
“She is grown,” he said. “She is become, it appears, a double cherry.”
“No,” said madam seriously, “the other is a second little foundling of my care, and destined to God’s—our God’s” (she added coyly)—“service, de Crespigny.”
She had no sense of humour, the dear creature. The next moment, noticing the direction of his gaze, with a little frown she bade us begone to our books.
We fled, and, once remote, I turned, with a tragi-hysteric stamp, upon my companion.
“Patience! And is that donkey him?”