“Hadn’t you better let me send for my calèche and pair for you?� gravely asked Skelton.
“Oh, no,� cried Sylvia briskly, and Skelton without a word picked her up and walked across the grassy lawn to the house. She was very light, and, except for flapping her wet sunbonnet in his face, he had no objection whatever to her. He carried her up the steps into the hall, and then turned her over to Mammy Kitty, who wrapped her foot in wet cabbage-leaves. Skelton went to the library. Presently, Bob Skinny’s woolly head was thrust in the door.
“Please, sah, Mr. Skelton, de young lady say will you please to come d’yar?�
Skelton, smiling at himself, rose and went back to the hall. Sylvia was perched on one foot, like a stork.
“I think,� she said, “if you’ll give me your arm I can walk around and look at the pretty things. Whenever I’ve been here with mamma she has always asked so many questions that I didn’t like to ask any myself.�
“You may ask any questions you like,� replied Skelton, still smiling. He never remembered exchanging a word with the child before. He had taken for granted that she was her mother’s own daughter, and as such he had no wish to cultivate her.
But Sylvia was not at all like her mother. She limped around the hall, looking gravely at the portraits.
The Skeltons were a handsome family, if the portraits could be believed. They were all dark, with clear-cut faces and high aquiline noses like Skelton’s, and they were all young.
“We have some portraits, you know,� remarked Sylvia, “but they are all old and ugly. Now, all of these are of pretty little girls and boys or handsome young ladies.�
“The Skeltons are not a long-lived family,� said Skelton. “They generally die before forty. Here is one—Janet Skelton—a little girl like you. She died at eighteen.�