"Did your father marry anybody else?" I inquired.
"My father died before my mother."
"Dear me," said I; "how very sad! Leo's father and mother died together. They were drowned in his father's yacht." I was in the middle of a history of my friend Leo, and of my visit to London, when a bell pealed loudly through the house.
"Somebody's in a hurry," said Mr. Andrewes; "that's the front-door bell."
In three minutes the dining-room door was opened, and the servant announced "Mr. Dacre." It would be untrue to say that I did not feel a little guilty when my father walked into the room. And yet I had not really thought there was "any harm" in my expedition. I think I was chiefly annoyed by the ignominious end of it. It was trying, after "dropping in" and "taking luncheon" like a grown-up gentleman, to be fetched home as a lost child.
"What could make you run away like this, Regie?" said my poor bewildered parent. "Mrs. Bundle is nearly mad with fright. It was very naughty of you. What were you thinking of?"
"I thought I would drop in," I explained. And in the pause resulting from my father's astonishment at my absurd and old-fashioned demeanour, I proceeded with Nurse Bundle's definition as well as I could recollect it in my confusion, and speak it for impending tears. "So I came, and Rubens came, and Mr. Andrewes was in the garden, and we sat down, to change the weather, and pass time like, and Mr. Andrewes was in the garden, and he gave me some flowers, and Mr. Andrewes asked me in, and I came in, and he gave me some luncheon and he asked Rubens to have some bones, and—"
"'Change the weather and pass time like,'" muttered my father. "Servants' language! oh, dear!"
In my vexation with things in general, and with the strong feeling within me that I was in the wrong, I seized upon the first grievance that occurred to me as an excuse for fretfulness, and once more quoted Nurse Bundle.
"It's so very quiet at home," I whimpered, with tears in my eyes, which had really no sort of connection with the dulness of the Hall, or with anything whatever but offended pride and vexation on my part.