"Hush!—I am glad you thought to bring up more apples, Biddy. Colonel, here is the most tempting spitzenberg—so good for a cold, too. Take this to mammy will you, Biddy? The one I sent you before, was not so nice as these, mammy—your favorite kind, you know."
Amused with the new scene in which I found myself, I accepted the assurance of the fair home mother, as the Germans have it, that I was not in the way, and lingered a little longer.
By and by, John came up to tell his mistress that there was an old man at the door with a basket of little things to sell, and that he had sent a box of sealing-wax for her to look at.
"Poo' man! poo' man?" said little Will, running up to my knee, with such a sorrowful look in his innocent face—"an' it so-o-o col'," he added, catching his mother's words, as if by instinct.
"Take him down the money, John," I overheard, in the intervals between the discourse of my juvenile instructor, "and this cup of chocolate—it will warm him. Ask him to sit by the hall stove, while he drinks it." Nothing was said about the exceedingly portly brace of sandwiches that were manufactured by the busiest of fingers, and which, through the golden veil of Willie's light curls, I saw snugly tucked in, on either side of the saucer.
"Now, young ladies," continued my amiable friend, addressing a bevy of her rosy-cheeked young nieces, who had just before entered the room, "here is a stick of fancy-colored wax, for each of us—make your own choice. Luckily there is a red stick for Col. Lunettes" (a half deprecatory glance at me), "the only color gentlemen use. And," as she received the box again—"there is some for mammy and me—we are in partnership, you know, mammy!"
A pleased look from the centre of the wide cap-frills by the window, was the only response to this appeal; but I had repeatedly observed that, despite her industry, mammy's huge spectacles took careful cognizance of the various proceedings around her.
As I was about, for very shame, to beat a retreat, a cheery—"good morning, Colonel, I tapped at your door, as I came up, and thought you were napping it," arrested my intended departure. "So wifie has coaxed you in here! Just like her! She thinks she can take the best care of you with"—
"With the rest of the children!" I interrupted.
"My loving spou," as Bessie says, when she recites John Gilpin, "may I trouble you to tie my cravat?" And with that important article of attire in his hand, my friend knelt upon a low foot-stool, before his household divinity.