"Let me go, Uncle!" said Jack.
"Or me, Colonel Ferrers!" cried Gertrude. "Any one of us would love to go!"
The Colonel beamed on them with his kindliest smile, but shook his head resolutely. "Thanks! thanks!" he said, heartily. "Good children! kind and thoughtful children! but I must go. Couldn't be easy, you understand."
"The fact is," said Jack, "Uncle Tom cannot be comfortable for more than twenty-four hours away from Hugh. After that length of time he becomes restive, and symptoms develop which—"
"Hold your tongue, sir!" cried the Colonel. "Nothing of the sort, sir! Mrs. Merryweather, I hoped you were teaching this fellow better manners. Symptoms, indeed! You have seen no symptoms in me, of anything except pure pleasure—pleasure in everything except the gabbling of a goose!"
"Surely not, dear friend!" said Mrs. Merryweather, laughing. "But all the same, I think I should not try to detain you when once you had made up your mind that Hugh needed you."
"All against me!" cried the Colonel. "'The little dogs and all'—I beg ten thousand pardons, my dear madam; you know the quotation! Well," he added, his face changing suddenly as he turned to Mrs. Merryweather and spoke in a lower tone, "fortunate old fellow, eh? to have one young face—two, perhaps, for my Giraffe loves me too—brighten when one comes. Ah! you, with all your wealth—richest woman of my acquaintance, give you my honor!—cannot tell what these boys mean to me. Hilda, too: most astonishing how I miss that child! but all your young people are so good to me—"
"Colonel!" cried Gertrude from the other end of the table. "Will you come with me in my canoe after tea?"
"Will I?" cried the Colonel. "Won't I? Lead the way, my dear!"