“No, sir. I was out walking when he called.”
“Well, do the same to-morrow,” cried he, peevishly, for another twitch of gout had just crossed him. “It's always so,” muttered he; “every annoyance of life lies in wait for the moment a man is laid up with gout, just as if the confounded malady were not torture enough by itself. There's Charley going out as a volunteer to India, for what or why no one can say. If there had been some insurmountable obstacle to his marriage with May, he 'd have remained to overcome it; but because he loves her, and that she likes him—By Jove, that was a pang!” cried he, wiping his forehead, after a terrible moment of pain. “Isn't it so, Clara?” he resumed. “You know better than any of us that May never cared for that tutor fellow,—I forget his name; besides, that's an old story now,—a matter of long ago. But he will go. He says that even a rash resolve at six-and-twenty is far better than a vain and hopeless regret at six-and-forty; but I say, let him marry May Leslie, and he need neither incur one nor the other. And so this guardian's name is Harris?”
“No, grandpapa, Stocmar.”
“Oh, to be sure. I was confounding him with another of those stage people. And what business has he to carry you off without your mother's consent?”
“Mamma does consent, sir. She says that my education has been so much neglected that it is actually indispensable I should study now.”
“Education neglected! what nonsense! Do they want to make you a Professor of the Sorbonne? Why, child, without any wish to make you vain, you know ten times as much as half the collegiate fellows one meets, what with languages, and music, and drawing, and all that school learning of mamma's own teaching. And then that memory of yours, Clara; why, you seem to me to forget nothing.”
“I remember but too well,” muttered she to herself.
“What was it you said, child? I did not catch it,” said he. And then, not waiting for her reply, he went on: “And all your high spirits, my little Clara, where are they gone? And your odd rhymes, that used to amuse me so? You never make them now.”
“They do not cross my mind as they used to do,” said she, pensively.
“You vote them childish, perhaps, like your dolls?” said he, smiling.