“Oh, fie!” he retorted, angrily; “you are mocking me.”
“Why should I want to mock you?” she asked; “you have never done me any harm.” And then she repeated her assertion that this was the sundial, and nothing else, and she also pointed out to him the hand, a miserable rusty piece of metal, which stuck out from the middle of the dial and threw its shadow just on number six, which was written there among other figures.
“Oh, this is too stupid,” he said, and turned away. The sundial in the garden of the White House was the first great disappointment of his life.
When he returned to the arbor with his new friend, he found a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with bushy whiskers there, who wore a gray shooting-coat, and whose eyes seemed to twinkle merrily.
“Who is that?” asked Paul, timidly, hiding behind his friend.
She laughed and said, “That is my papa; you need not be afraid of him.”
And, shouting with joy, she jumped on the strange man’s knee.
Then he thought to himself, would he ever dare to jump on his papa’s knee, and from this he concluded that all fathers were not alike.
But the man in the shooting-coat caressed his child, kissed her on both cheeks, and let her ride on his knees.
“See! Elsbeth has got a playfellow,” said the kind, strange lady, pointing towards Paul, who, hidden by the foliage, glanced shyly towards the arbor.