"Ridiculous! Ah, what an amusing baby you are! Why should I not like him? He is our old and good acquaintance." And returning to her usual formality, she added: "Besides, you know that I do not like anyone very much."
"Not me?" asked Cara, fondly touching with her red lips the pale cheeks of her sister.
"You? A little! But go away. You hinder my reading."
"I will go. Come Puffie—come!" And with the dog on her arm she went off, but she stopped at the door, and turning to Irene, she bent forward a little, and said, in a low voice: "But I do not like him—I do not know why this is. First I liked him, but for some time I cannot endure him—I do not know myself why."
At the last words she turned away, capriciously, and went on.
"She does not know! does not know!" whispered Irene over her book. "That is why she dances with the dog. What happiness in Arcadian life!"
The little one, going on, began to hum again, but near the door of her father's study she grew silent and stopped. The sound of a number of men's voices in conversation reached her. She dropped her hand, and whispered:
"Father has visitors! What shall we do now, Puffie? How shall we go in there?"
After a moment's thought and hesitation she stepped in very quietly under the drapery of the portiere, and in the twinkle of an eye was sitting on a small, low stool which stood behind a tall case of shelves filled with books, which, placed near the door, formed with two walls a narrow, triangular space. That was an excellent corner, a real asylum which she could reach unobserved, and which she had selected for herself earlier. The books on the shelves hid her perfectly, but left small cracks through which she could see everyone. Whenever there were guests with her father she entered directly from the door, with one silent little step she pushed in, waited longer than the guests, and when they were gone she could talk with her father.
At the round table, which was covered with books, maps, and pamphlets, in broad armchairs were sitting, hat in hand, men of various statures and ages. They had not come on business, but to make calls of longer or shorter duration. Some were giving place to others, who came unceasingly, or rather flowed in as wave follows wave. Some went, others came. The pressing of hands, bows more or less profound, polite and choice phrases, conversation, interrupted and begun again, conversation touching important and serious questions of European politics, local questions of the higher order, and problems of society, especially financial and economic.