"So he did!" cried Mr. Montfort, delighted. "I can see him now, with one leg curled under him, eating apples and shouting about Lancelot and Tristram."
"And you sat in the great copper coal-hod—ah! there it is!—and read Froissart, the great folio with the colored prints. I see it, just in the place father described."
"Uncle John," said Margaret, reproachfully, "you never told me that you sat in the coal-scuttle. I know papa's perch, the mantel-piece, because he could get at the little Shakespeares from there."
Mr. Montfort laughed.
"Leave me some remnant of dignity, Meg," he said. "How can you expect me to confess that I sat in the coal-scuttle? Have you no reverence for gray hairs?"
"Oh, a very great deal, dear Uncle; but there were no gray hairs in the coal-scuttle days; and my only regret about you is the not having known you when you were a boy."
"Horrid monkey, I have been given to understand," said her uncle, lightly. "Go on, Hugh; tell us some more of the things that Jim—your father—remembers. Old Jim! it's a great shame that he never comes to look up the old place himself."
"It is indeed, sir!" said Hugh. "I've always thought so, and now that I see the place—oh, I shall send him, that's all, as soon as ever I get home. There are the Indian clubs; oh, the carved one—is it true that that was given to Grandfather Montfort by a Fiji chief, or was the Pater fooling us? He sometimes makes up things, he acknowledges, just for the fun of it."
"True enough, I believe!" said Mr. Montfort, taking down the great club, covered from end to end with strange and delicate carving.
"Did he ever tell you how near he came to breaking my head with this club? He may have forgotten; I have not. We used to keep it in our room, the great nursery up-stairs, Margaret; you must show that to Hugh by and by. I woke up one night, and was afraid the crow that I was taming in the back garden might be hungry. I got out of the window and shinned down the spout. The crow was all right; but when I came back, Jim woke up, and took me for a burglar, and went for me with the club, thinking it the chance of his life. I was only half-way through the bars when he caught me a crack—I can hear my skull rattle with it now."