“Yes. Look, auntie.”
Edgar, as he spoke, took me up and exposed my gum.
“Do you see that brilliant red flashing little spot, aunt?”
“Yes, my dear boy. Let me get my glasses. Why, I declare, Edgar, it is a brilliant, a ruby, and though small, it looks like a priceless gem.”
“And so it is; and the person who had it put there is a still more priceless gem to me.”
“I don’t understand you, Edgar; you always were a strange child.”
“Well, shall I tell you the story of the ruby?”
Mrs Clifford folded her mittened hands in her lap, and looked, or tried to look resigned.
“I think,” she said, “I know what is coming. You have been out in Persia, and you have fallen in love with some designing minx of a Persian girl, and she gave you that Persian cat—and—and—and—” here the old lady began to tap with her foot against the footstool—“oh, that my brother’s boy should have fallen in love with a blackamoor!”
Edgar at this moment pulled out a case from his pocket, and opening it by means of touching a spring, held out before his auntie’s astonished gaze a charmingly executed miniature portrait of my sweet mistress.