“After dinner, decidedly, if Aunt Rachel’s coffee is good.”
Syl nodded her piquant little head. “I’ll wait, then.”
The dinner was good enough to have tempted a less hungry man than Mr. Graham, and the coffee was perfect. Papa’s dressing-gown and slippers were ready, upstairs; and when he had sat down in the great, soft easy-chair that awaited him, and his daughter had settled herself on a stool at his feet, I think it would have been hard to find a more contented-looking man in all New York.
“Now I’m very sure you are as good as such a bear can be,” said saucy Syl; “and now we’ll converse.”
To “converse” was Syl’s pet phrase for the course of request, reasoning, entreaty, by which Papa Graham was usually brought to accede to all her wishes, however extravagant. He rested his hand now on her shining chestnut braids, and thought how like she was to the young wife he had loved so well, and lost so early. Then he said teasingly,—
“What is it, this time? A Paris doll, with a trunk and a bandbox; or a hand-organ?”
“For shame, papa! The doll was four years ago.”
“All the more reason it must be worn out. Then it’s the hand-organ. But I must draw the line somewhere,—you can’t have the monkey. If Punch and Judy would do, though?”
“Now, Father Lucius, you know I gave up the hand-organ two years ago, and took a piano for my little upstairs room instead; and you know I’m seventeen. Am I likely, at this age, to want monkeys, Punch and Judys, and things?”
“O, no! I forgot. Seventeen,—it must be a sewing-machine. You want to make all your endless bibs and tuckers more easily. Well, I’ll consent.”