Uncle sat down, blinking rapidly at us, and a little fat man in the corner eyed me curiously.
"Your sister's daughter, my good man?" says I to uncle, with a benevolent smile. He nodded.
"And a very precious daughter she has been to us, sir," says aunt with a sort of whine.
Now that kind fairly makes my stomach queasy, and, moreover, I guessed what she was after. She meant to pull a long face on parting with her niece, with an eye to money.
"I hope," said I, suavely, "that she will prove a precious daughter to me in good time."
"That depends," says the little fat man, who, it seems, was a grocer.
"Ay, that depends," says the remaining person in the room, a thin, elderly woman.
"Well," said I, annoyed at this intervention, "it depends on whether miss here suits me. I will confess she has took my fancy, and I have room for her."
"You want to adopt Nancy?" says the aunt.