The doctor shook his head dubiously, but was silent.
“I half suspect, my good doctor,” said Stapylton, laughing, “that your charming daughter is a little, a very little, of a domestic despot; you are all afraid of her; never very sure of what she will say or do or think on any given circumstances, and nervously alive to the risk of her displeasure.”
“There is something in what you say,” remarked Dill, with a sigh; “but it was always my mistake to bring up my children with too much liberty of action. From the time they were so high”—and he held his hand out about a yard above the floor—“they were their own masters.”
Just as the words had fallen from him, a little chubby, shock-headed fellow, about five years old, burst into the room, which he believed unoccupied, and then, suddenly seeing his papa, set up a howl of terror that made the house ring.
“What is it, Jimmy,—what is it, my poor man?” said Polly, rushing with tucked-up sleeves to the spot; and, catching him up in her arms, she kissed him affectionately.
“Will you take him away?—will you take him out of that?” hissed out Dill between his teeth. “Don't you see Major Stapylton here?”
“Oh, Major Stapylton will excuse a toilette that was never intended for his presence.”
“I will certainly say there could not be a more becoming one, nor a more charming tableau to display it in!”
“There, Jimmy,” said she, laughing; “you must have some bread and jam for getting me such a nice compliment.”
And she bore away the still sobbing urchin, who, burying his head in her bosom, could never summon courage to meet his father's eye.