Grandfather looked gravely at the bronze figure.
"That is an image of Buddha, the Indian god," he said. "Perhaps after dinner I'll tell you a story about him."
He lifted Hortense from his knee and, taking her by the hand, went into Grandmother's room.
Mary had brought in the tea wagon, which Hortense thought looked like a dwarf. Indeed, all the furniture seemed curiously alive, as though it could talk if it would. In the corner was a lowboy. With the firelight falling on its polished surface and on the bright brass handles to its drawers, it seemed to make a fat smiling face, as of a good-humored boy.
"What a jolly face," Hortense thought. "He'd be good fun to play with, I'm sure."
She ate her toast and cake while Grandfather and Grandmother talked together in the twilight. And the darker the room grew, the more it seemed alive.
"I believe all these things are talking," said Hortense to herself. "Now, if I could only hear! Perhaps if I had an ear trumpet or something——"
As she was thinking thus, a great tortoise-shell cat walked calmly in, seated himself on the hearth-rug, and stared into the fire. It seemed to Hortense that the flredogs fairly leaped out at him, but the cat only gazed placidly at them.
"He knows they can't get at him," thought Hortense, "and he's saying something to make them mad."
Grandfather and Grandmother were talking in a low tone, and Hortense suddenly found herself listening to them with interest.