“But I shall have to begin soon if I’m to work at all. You and Aunt Beryl have always said that I must do something when I leave school.”
“And supposing I said now that things have looked up a little, and you could live at home and help your aunt a bit, and take little Shamrock out of a morning. Eh, Lyddie, what then?”
Lydia was silent, but she did not attempt to conceal that her face fell at the suggestion.
“Well, well, well,” said Grandpapa again, “so it’s to be London!”
“Then you’ll let me go,” Lydia exclaimed, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
Grandpapa uttered one of his most disagreeable, croaking laughs.
“Don’t talk like a little fool, my dear! You know very well that if you want to go, you’ll go. How can I prevent it? I am only an old man.”
Lydia was disconcerted. Grandpapa never spoke of himself as old, and the hint of pathos in the admission, unintentional though she supposed it to be, seemed to her out of place in the present juncture.
She grew more annoyed as the evening wore on, for Grandpapa was really very tiresome.
“A useless old man, that’s what I am,” he soliloquized, taking care, however, to make himself perfectly audible.