"Come, child, I shall be finished long before you," he observed at last.
Anne-Hilarion sighed, and, addressing himself once more to the fray, made great play with his spoon, finally announcing, in true Scots phrase, that he had finished 'them.'
"That's right," said the old gentleman. "Some more milk, my bairn? Bring your cup."
Anne slipped down and presented his mug. "I think we were going out this morning, Grandpapa," he observed, with his little engaging air, watching the filling of the receptacle.
"So we were, my lamb. And we were going to buy something. What was it?"
"A goldfish," whispered the little boy. "A goldfish!" He gave his grandfather's arm a sudden ecstatic squeeze, and climbed back to his place.
"To be sure, a goldfish," was beginning Mr. Elphinstone, when at that moment in came a letter, brought by Lal Khan, the dusky, turbaned bearer—source, once, of much infantile terror to M. le Comte, but now one of his greatest friends. On him Anne-Hilarion bestowed, ere he salaamed himself out again, one of his sudden smiles. Mr. Elphinstone, after hunting vainly for his spectacles, opened the letter. It drew from him an exclamation.
"Here's actually a letter from your father already, Anne. He has written from Canterbury, on his way to Dover."
Above the milk he was drinking, Anne-Hilarion's dark, rather solemn eyes were fixed on his grandfather.
"Dear me, this is very curious," said Mr. Elphinstone, looking up from the perusal of the letter. "Your father finds, he says, that some old friends of his family are living there—at Canterbury, that is—two old French ladies. What's the name? . . . de Chaulnes—Madame and Mademoiselle de Chaulnes. He came across them quite by chance, it appears. And—I wonder what you will say to this, Anne—he wants you to go and stay with them for a few days."