She was not addressing me; it was rather one of her peculiarities—and she had many—to soliloquize, and I was accustomed to it; but I now raised my eyes from the grammar I was studying, and, looking at her, I listened. She detected this.
"Did you ever see anything like it?" she emphatically observed, questioning that unknown individual with whom she often held a sort of interrogative discourse; "why, if that child were fast asleep, and you only whispered my brother's name, she would wake up directly. Oh! Midge, Midge!" She shook her head as though scarcely approving a feeling so exclusive, and gave the fire a slow meditative thrust. The clock, by striking half-past eight, roused her from her abstraction.
"Daisy," she said very seriously, "go and knock at the door of Cornelius, and tell him the hour." I obeyed; that is to say, I went upstairs; but I found the door standing wide open, and the room vacant, so I proceeded to the little study, thinking Cornelius might perhaps be there. I knocked at the door and received no answer; I knocked again with the same result. Then I perceived that the door was not quite shut, but stood ajar; I gently pushed it open and looked in. The little table was not in its usual place; it stood so as to receive the most favourable degree of light; before it sat Cornelius in a bending attitude, and, as I saw at a glance, drawing from one of the plaster casts.
CHAPTER VIII
So intent was Cornelius on his occupation that he never heard or saw me, until I observed, somewhat timidly, "Cornelius, Kate sent me up to tell you that it is half-past eight o'clock."
He looked up with a sudden start that nearly upset the table, and sharply exclaimed, "Why did you come in without knocking?"
"I knocked twice, Cornelius, but you did not answer."
"If you had knocked ten times, you had no right to open that door and enter this room."
"Cornelius, the door was open," I said very earnestly, for he looked quite vexed, with his face flushed, and his brow knit.
"Oh, was it?" he replied, smoothing down. He looked hastily at the drawing on the table, then gave me a quick glance, read in my face that I had seen it, and, taking a sudden resolve, he said, "Come in, and shut the door."