Mr. Twiggs put down his tea without tasting it. “Tudens,” he said, after a long pause, in which he carefully buttered a piece of toast for the second time,—“Tudens, I’m ’most afeard you didn’t grasp that last remark of mine: I was a-sayin’—”
“Well—” said Tudens, attentively.
“I was a-sayin’,” said Mr. Twiggs, averting his face and staring stoically at his toast—“I was a-sayin’ that you was a-gittin’ now to be quite a young woman.”
“Oh, so you were,” said Tudens, with charming naïveté.
“Well,” said Mr. Twiggs, repentantly, but with a humorous twinkle, “if I wasn’t a-sayin’ of it, I was a-thinkin’ it.”—And then, running along hurriedly, “And I’ve been a-thinkin’ it for days and days—ever sence you left the ‘balley’ and went in ‘chambermaids,’ and last in leadin’ rôles. Maybe you ain’t noticed it, but I’ve had my eyes on you from the ‘flies’ and the ‘wings’; and jest betwixt us, Tudens, and not for me as ort to know better, and does know better, to go a-flatterin’, at my time o’—or to go a-flatterin’ anybody, as I said, after you’re a-gittin’ to be a young woman—and what’s more, a werry ’andsome young woman!”
“Why, Pop’m!” exclaimed Tudens, blushing.
“Yes, you are, Tudens, and I mean it, every word of it; and as I was a-goin’ on to say, I’ve been a-watchin’ of you, and a-layin’ off a long time jest to tell you summat that will make your eyes open wider ’an that! What I mean,” said Mr. Twiggs, coughing vehemently and pushing his chair back from the table—“what I mean is, you’ll soon be old enough to be a-settin’ up for yourself-like, and a-marry’—W’y, Tudens, what ails you?” The girl had risen to her feet, and, with a face dead white and lips all tremulous, stood clinging to her chair for support. “What ails you, Tudens?” repeated Mr. Twiggs, rising to his feet and gazing on her with a curious expression of alarm and tenderness.
“Nothing serious, dear Pop’m,” said Tudens, with a flighty little laugh,—“only it just flashed on me all at once that I’d clean forgotten poor ‘Dick’s’ supper.” And as she turned abruptly to the parrot, cooing and clucking to him playfully,—up, up from some hitherto undreamed-of depth within the yearning heart of Mr. Twiggs mutely welled the old utterance, “Tude’s a queer girl!”
“Whatever made you think of such a thing, Father?” called Tudens, gayly; and then, without waiting for an answer, went on cooing to the parrot,—“Hey, old dicky-bird! do you think Tudens is a handsome young woman? and do you think Tudens is old enough to marry, eh?” This query delivered, she broke into a fit of merriment which so wrought upon the susceptibilities of the bird that he was heard repeatedly to declare and affirm, in most positive and unequivocal terms, that Tude had actually come home.
“Yes—sir, Tudens!” broke in Mr. Twiggs at last, lighting a fresh churchwarden and settling into his old position at the grate; “have your laugh out over it now, but it’s a werry serious fact, for all that.”