And uncle had to come and shake the scape-grace by the hand.
“Grandpa, look here; you don’t see Dick. Here’s Dick waiting to speak to you!” she persisted.
And General Lyon had to turn and meet the engaging smile of the handsome boy.
“Alick,” said Anna, in a low whisper, giving her betrothed a sharp dig in the ribs with her elbow, and a very vicious look from her angry blue eyes, “if you don’t stop glowering, and come and speak to Dick, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Anything to keep peace in the family,” laughed Mr. Alexander, as he cleared up his brow, and went and welcomed the new comer.
And in two minutes more Dick was seated in the circle around the fire, the life of the little company talking and laughing, telling jokes and singing songs, and keeping everybody pleased and amused, so that they forgot they did not want him, and almost fancied that they could not do without him.
There was nothing very wrong about Dick Hammond. It is true that he was a very unpromising law student, being rather idle and extravagant—fonder of play than of work, and loving his “friends” better than himself. You know the sort of man—one of that sort of whom it is always said that he is “nobody’s enemy but his own.”
Dick had a neat little patrimony, but his relations said that he was in a fair way of making “ducks and drakes” of it, and they discountenanced and disapproved of him accordingly.
His one fast friend was his cousin Anna, and every year she was growing to be a stronger and more important one.
At ten o’clock that night, Mr. Richard Hammond made a motion to go, but the chief justice said: