“What a funny fat hand!”
“What did you say you called yourself?” said the squire, lifting Rachel’s chin and peering into her dark face. “Griselda and Katharine, I’ll thank you not to stand staring and gaping. What did you call yourself? What name did you say belonged to you, child? I’m hard of hearing; tell me again.”
“I’m Rachel Valentine Lovel,” repeated the child in a confident tone. “I was called after my mamma and after father—father’s in heaven, and it makes my mother cry to say Valentine, so I’m Rachel; and this is Kitty—her real name is Katharine—Katharine Lovel. We have come in a dog-cart, and mother is downstairs, and we want to see all the house, and particularly the tower, and we want to see grandfather, and we want a bunch of grapes each.”
All the time Rachel was speaking the squire kept regarding her more and more fiercely. When she said “My mother is downstairs,” he even gave her a little push away. Rachel was not at all appalled; she knit her own black brows and tried to imitate him.
“I never saw such a cross old man; did you, Kitty? Please, old man, let us go now. We want to find grandfather.”
“Perhaps it’s a pain him got,” said Kitty, stroking the swollen hand tenderly. “Mother says when I’s got a pain I can’t help looking cross.”
The fierce old eyes turned slowly from one lovely little speaker to the other; then the squire raised his head and spoke abruptly.
“Griselda and Katharine, come here. Have the goodness to tell me who this child resembles,” pointing as he spoke to Rachel. “Look at her well, study her attentively, and don’t both answer at once.”
There was not the slightest fear of Miss Katharine interrupting Miss Griselda on this occasion. She only favored dark-eyed little Rachel with a passing glance; but her eyes, full of tears, rested long on the fair little baby face of Kitty.
“This child in all particulars resembles the portrait of our great-uncle Rupert,” said Miss Griselda, nodding at Rachel as she did so. “The same eyes, the same lift of the eyebrows, and the same mouth.”