'Perhaps it is a robin-redbreast,' said Felix.
'No, nobody kills robin-redbreasts, because they covered the poor little children with leaves.'
'Will you cover me with leaves, if I am lost, Bobbie?' said Mr. Audley; but as soon as she found that his attention was gained, she returned to the charge.
'Please, did it come from your own home? and what is it, really?'
'Why, Bobbie, I am hardly prepared to say whether it is a Hamburg or a Houdan, or a more unambitious Dorking. Cannot you eat in comfort without being certified?'
'The species will be enough for her without the varieties,' said her father. 'You have given us a new experience, you see, Audley, and we may make a curious study of contrasts—not of Audley and myself, Mother dear, but of the two Underwoods who seem to be in this place together to-day.'
'Who is it?' was of course the cry; and the inquiry was in Mrs. Underwood's eyes, though it did not pass her quiet lips. It was to her that he answered, 'Yes, my dear—Tom; I have little doubt that it is he. He was a very rich man when last I heard of him.'
'Is that the man at Vale Leston?' whispered Alda to Felix. 'Oh, I hope he is not coming here to insult us.'
'Bosh!' said Felix; 'that man's name is Fulbert. Listen, if you want to hear.'
'Twenty years ago,' continued Mr. Underwood, 'I thought myself a prodigiously fine fellow—with my arms full of prizes at Harrow, and my Trinity scholarship—and could just, in the plenitude of my presumption, extend a little conceited patronage to that unlucky dunce, Tom Underwood, the lag of every form, and thankful for a high stool at old Kedge's. And now my children view a cold fowl as an unprecedented monster, while his might, I imagine, revel in 'pâtés de foie gras.'