“You know that I always like to have the little fellow.”
“But I shall stipulate that the whistle be left behind. We shall find instruments of torture enough in the Tower; though I don’t believe the utmost ingenuity of cruelty ever thought of a child’s whistle wherewith to torment a victim. That was left for Mr. Alick.”
“Come, come, Anna, I will not have another word said against Alick, since it grieves our darling here. But I would like to know what keeps him hanging about here so long. He has been here now nearly two years.”
“Uncle,” said Drusilla, who now thought that she might as well tell all her news at once—news which indeed she had intended to tell, when the subject of Alick’s presence was first introduced, but which was then arrested on her lips by the indignant animadversions of General Lyon—“Uncle do you remember reading last winter in the London Times of a young American gentleman who claimed, through his mother, the Barony of Killcrichtoun?”
“I—think I do remember some such asinine proceeding on the part of a young countryman of ours.”
“He was your nephew, uncle, and he has made good the claim. He is now Lord Killcrichtoun. That is the reason why he stays in England, I suppose.”
“Whe—ew!” whistled the old gentleman, slowly, adding sotto voce, so as not to be heard by Drusilla:
“I knew he was a scamp; but never suspected him of being an ass.”
But Dick had handed Drusilla, Lenny and Anna into the carriage, and was waiting to perform the same service for his uncle, who now entered and took his seat. The drive from Charing Cross to the Tower was comparatively short, but very interesting, taking our travelers through the most ancient and historical portions of Old London.
Drawing near the grim, old fortress of the kings of England, they saw rising above the thickly-crowded buildings of the city and the turbid waters of the Thames, the central keep, or citadel, known as the White Tower, and surrounded by its double line of fortified walls and by its dry moat.