“About me?” said the old man.
“She said you were our grandpapa. So then I knew she was telling you know what.”
“How did you know it wasn’t true?” the old man asked.
“Why, of course,” said Robin, “if you were our mamma’s father, you’d know her, and be very fond of her, and come and see her. And then you’d be our grandfather, too, and you’d have us to see you, and perhaps give us Christmas-boxes. I wish you were,” Robin added with a sigh. “It would be very nice.”
“Would you like it?” asked the old man of Dora.
And Dora, who was half asleep and very comfortable, put her little arms about his neck as she was wont to put them round the Captain’s, and said, “Very much.”
He put her down at last, very tenderly, almost unwillingly, and left the children alone. By-and-by he returned, dressed in the blue cloak, and took Dora up again.
“I will see you home,” he said.
The children had not been missed. The clock had only just struck nine when there came a knock on the door of the dining-room, where the Captain and his wife still sat by the yule-log. She said “Come in,” wearily, thinking it was frumenty and the Christmas cakes.
But it was her father, with her child in her arms!