For answer, she held out her arms, and put up her lips to be kissed.
The doctor caught her, murmuring, "So like, so like that other!"
He took no further notice of Bob, but carried the little girl back with him into the room.
And when the housekeeper returned, an hour or two afterwards, she found, to her great annoyance, that Milly was making herself quite at home among the quaint odd playthings the doctor had given her.
Her first resolution was that Milly should not stay there long, but in this she had reckoned without her host. Dr. Mansfield would not hear of the child being sent away, and his attachment to her seemed to grow every day. She was his constant companion; and although he often appeared to be silently looking at her in moody indifference, her very presence seemed to afford him so much relief from his own more gloomy thoughts, that he could not bear to have her out of his sight very long.
"Wait a bit, things won't last like this always," said the housekeeper. "Master will be glad to get rid of the little plague by and by."
And the time when this was expected came very soon. Dr. Mansfield shut himself up in his room, and forbade any one to disturb him.
Milly's first inquiry, on coming down stairs in the morning and seeing his place empty, was for him. When told he was in his room, though bidden to remain, she was turning to go to him, but was caught, and with sundry slaps laid upon her arms and shoulders, brought back to her breakfast.
Whether it was that she was unused to this mode of punishment, and felt the indignity of it, or whether the housekeeper's repeated threats that she could never see the doctor any more, appealed to her fear, and by this to her passion, certain it is that she burst into a such a fury of anger, that her persecutor set her free in alarm, and Milly ran shrieking up to the doctor's door, which was at once opened to her, and she ran sobbing into his arms.
"Milly, Milly, what is the matter?" he asked, kissing and trying to comfort her.