“I’m glad you are punctual, Miss Josephine, else I’d have had to begin my dinner without you. I never put back meals for anybody,” he remarked.
“Would you? Don’t you? Then I’m glad, too. Isn’t the frock pretty? My mamma worked all these flowers with her own little white hands. I love it. I had to kiss them before I could put it on,” she said, again lifting her skirt and touching it with her lips.
“I suppose you love your mamma very dearly. What is she like?”
He was leading her along the hall toward the dining-room, and Peter, standing within its entrance, congratulated himself that he had laid the table for two. He glanced at his master’s face, found it good-natured and interested, and took his own cue therefrom.
“She is like—she is like the most beautiful thing in the world, dear Uncle Joe. Don’t you remember?” asked the astonished child.
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“That’s a pity, and you my papa’s twin. Papa hasn’t nice gray hair like yours, though, and there isn’t any shiny bare place on top of his head. I mean there wasn’t when he went away last year. His hair was dark, like mamma’s, and his mustache was brown and curly. I think he isn’t as big as you, Uncle Joe, and his clothes are gray, with buttony fixings on them. He has a beautiful sash around his waist, sometimes, and lovely shoulder trimmings. He’s an officer, my papa is, in Company F. That’s for ’musement, mamma says. For the business, he’s a ’lectrickeller. Is this my place? Thank you, Peter.”
Mr. Smith handed his little visitor to her chair, which the old butler had pulled back for her, with the same courtly manner he would have shown the pastor’s wife. Indeed, if he had been asked he would have admitted that he found the present guest the more interesting of the two.
Peter made ready to serve the soup, but a look from the strange child restrained him. She added a word to the look:
“Why, boy, you forgot. Uncle Joe hasn’t said the grace yet.”