“Just so; and your uncle enjoys the idea of our being angry about the money. That’s why I want to ask him,” he added, proudly.
“Then, Otto, if it is to be a family reunion, should we not”—her voice dropped to a whisper; she fingered a button of his waistcoat—“ask Gerard too?”
“Yes, we will ask Gerard,” he answered, hurriedly, annoyed that she should utter what he had been making up his mind to say. And then he left the room without another word.
Ursula smiled to herself, and immediately began to apostrophize the helpless infant: “And we will have a Christmas-tree, Baby,” she said, “and a lot of beautiful lights, Baby. And warm socks and shoes for the babies that haven’t got any, Baby. And you shall give blankets and coals to all the old women, Baby.”
But even this appalling prospect did not move little Otto. He lay staring steadily, and that constant frown, which his grandfather said he had been born with, wrinkled the raw beef-steak of his unfinished little face.
Meanwhile Otto had gone to tell his mother of the coming festivities. The old Baroness did not seem to pay much attention, immersed as she was in a sort of memoir which she had been recently concocting to the glorification of her departed lord.
“What did you say young Helmont’s name was?” she asked, suddenly, peering over her heavy gold eye-glasses.
“A family name, mamma—Theodore.”
“It is an insult,” said the Dowager, and her gaze once more fell on the page in front of her.