“We should not have enjoyed the trip, dear grandpa, if you had not been with us. Neither I nor Dick cared to go to Europe until we could all go together.”
“Then, please Providence, we will go all together next spring,” said the General, looking around upon his young people. “What do you say, Anna?”
“We shall both be delighted,” answered Anna for herself and her husband, who immediately endorsed her reply.
“And you, Drusilla, shall you like to go to Europe?” inquired the General.
“Of all things! I have so long wished to see the old historical world!” she answered, pausing in her work of opening her foreign packet.
And then, for a little while, sitting around the table, they were all engaged in looking over the newspapers, each occasionally reading aloud to the others, who suspended their own employment to hear any little item of news supposed to be interesting.
“I declare there is nothing in our papers. Anything in yours, dear?” inquired Anna of Drusilla, who had been the only silent reader of the party.
“Not much of interest to us, over here. We do not care about the doings in Parliament, or the trials at the Old Bailey, or the meetings at Exeter Hall, or the murders in Bermondsey, or even about the movements of royalty and nobility.”
“Oh, yes, we do care about that last item. We are intensely democratic and republican here, and so of course we are breathlessly anxious to know where ‘Majesty,’ took an airing, what ‘Royal Highness’ wore to the opera, and whom ‘Grace’ entertained at dinner!” laughed Anna.
“Then read for yourself, my dear,” answered Drusilla, passing the “Times.”