At that moment, Octave’s suspicion that her companion was “somebody’s grandfather” was confirmed. A merry little child ran into the room, and with a scream of delight that she had escaped her nurse’s hands, bounded upon the old man’s knee. “O grandpa! don’t let her take me to bed, will you? I haven’t played you were a bear for three days!”
“Three days, is it, sweetheart? That is long indeed, for little people to remember. Maybe I will play bear, soon; just now I am busy. Go and tell the good bonne that I wish you to stay up one half-hour longer; then you may come and sit upon my lap, and hear me talk with this young girl.”
The child ran swiftly away, singing something in French; and thereby puzzling poor Octave’s brain still more. A baby of three, possibly four, years old, who talked in excellent English and sang carols in French, was astonishing enough; but not so greatly such as to be met at the entrance by pomposity in livery and find the interior, if far richer, as unpretentious as the living room at The Snuggery.
Her puzzle was destined to increase. “Now, my dear, if you will show me the papers, and tell me what you wish, I shall be happy to serve you,” said the old man, stroking his white beard and looking into her astonished eyes with the most encouraging of smiles.
“You—you? Are you Prof. Edric von Holsneck?” faltered Octave.
“Yes. It was he you came to see?”
“Yes, si-ir; but—but I—perhaps I had better go away. I didn’t think so at first, but now it seems like presumption for me to talk to—to you.” Try as she would, the girl could not reconcile the real professor with her preconceived notion of him. She had fancied a tall, stern, spectacled person, in a laboratory, and with learning fairly oozing from his gaunt person. But this man, he might have been—anybody!
“There is no presumption in any honest person’s talking to any other. Evidently you thought you had something worth saying or you would not have taken the trouble to come and try to say it. I shall be glad to hear or read the matter you have in hand.” His manner, rather than his words, said also that he would be glad to do so at once, for wasted moments were a thing unknown in his day’s calendar.
Octave became herself again on the instant. All her timidity vanished, and with the simple directness of manner which some found so charming because it was so wholly natural and unconscious of self, she told him Melville’s story. The little grandchild came in, and, evidently accustomed to be quiet when her grandfather so desired, nestled herself in his arms and lay there still, with her eyes fixed upon Octave’s face, and apparently listening closely to every word she uttered.
“The papers,” said Prof. von Holsneck, when she had related with lucid brevity all that had led up to Melville’s discovery. His eyes had gained in brightness and his whole manner had lost the look of age and fatigue it had worn when Octave first beheld him. Knowledge was to this man what a draught of wine is to some others.