The child sprang to her. “Don’t ye, don’t ye do that. I’ll slick up. Gimme a lickin’, only let me stay. I’ll not look at him—the devil!” with a furious glance at Camperdown. “I’ll turn round face to the wall, only, only don’t send me out in the cold.”
What could Stargarde do? Pardon, pardon, always pardon, that was the secret of her marvelous hold on the members of her enormous family. She drew up the little footstool to a corner, placed the child on it, and shaking her head at Dr. Camperdown, sat down opposite him. “Take people for what they are—not for what they ought to be,” she said to him in German.
“You are a good woman, Stargarde,” he returned softly in the same language. “I can give you no higher praise. And I have had a good dinner,” he continued, drawing back from the table. “What are you going to do with those dishes? Mayn’t I help you wash them?”
“No, thank you. Zeb will assist me when you have gone.”
He smiled at her hint to withdraw, and placing the rocking-chair by the fire for her, said wistfully: “Do you really wish me to go?”
“Well, you may stay for half an hour longer,” she replied, as indulgent with him as she was with the child.
As soon as the words left her lips, he ensconced himself comfortably in the arm-chair, and gazing into the fire listened dreamily to the low-murmured sentences Stargarde was addressing to the child, who had crept into her arms begging to be rocked.
“I wish I could smoke,” he said presently; “I think you don’t object to the smell of tobacco, Stargarde?”
“No,” she said quietly, “not the smell of it.”
“But the waste, the hurtfulness of the habit, eh?”