"'Thy elder brother I would be,
Thy father, anything to thee!'"
"By-the-by, Dicky, where is your father now?" asks Stephen Gower, who is leaning against the mantelpiece in Dulce's vicinity, but not quite close to her. Ill-temper, called dignity, forbids his nearer approach to his goddess.
"Down South," says Dicky. "Not in Carolina, exactly, but in Devon. It does remind one of the ten little nigger boys, doesn't it?" Then he begins with a quite uncalled for amount of energy, "'Eight little nigger boys traveling in Devon, one overslept hisself, and then there were seven,'" and would probably have continued the dismal ditty up to the bitter end, but that Sir Mark calls him up sharp.
"Never mind the niggers," he says, "tell us about your father. Where is he now?"
"Down at the old place, cursing his fate, no doubt. By-the-bye, talking of my ancestral home, I wish some day you would all come and put in a month there. Will you?"
"We will," says Julia, directly. Julia is always ready to go anywhere, children and all, at a moment's notice.
"Is it a nice place, Dicky?" asks Sir Mark, cautiously.
"No, it isn't," says Mr. Browne; "not now, you know. I hear it used to be; but there's no believing old people, they lie like fun. I'll get it settled up for all of you, if you'll promise to come, but just at present it isn't much. It is an odd old place, all doors and dust, and rats, I shouldn't wonder."
"That's nothing," says Gower. "Anything else against it?"
"Well, I don't know," replies Dicky, gloomily. "It smells, I think."