“Why, of course!”
“And of Belle?”
“Belle? Well, yes, I dare say I am, when she doesn’t sneak on Dorrie.”
“Gerald, I think you are forgetting yourself,” interrupted my father angrily. “That girl has made you worse than herself. It is just as well that you are going to be parted. For the present, you have been long enough in the drawing-room.”
“Very well, sir,” said Jerry, and turned to leave the room at once. Lady Elizabeth, I could see, was more amused than vexed; Belle looked at both Jerry and me with angry disdain, and the earl just laughed as if Jerry had uttered a very good joke.
“Wait a bit, Jerry,” he said. “If the others will excuse me for a few minutes, I would like you to show me this wonderful dog and pony. And as they are Dorrie’s property she will perhaps be good enough to come with us.”
As nobody entered any objection to the earl’s proposals, I accompanied him from the room, and five minutes later he and Jerry and I were interviewing Teddy and Bobby, who had been having a gambol at the foot of the orchard. The orchard was not a place they were supposed to frisk about in. But somebody had carelessly left the wicket open, and it was not their fault, poor things, that a choice young “ribstone pippin” had been snapped in two during their frolics.
The earl was certainly a funny man. He was as different from what I had always supposed an earl to be as was possible. In fact, he was more like a jolly old farmer than anything else. But what a gossip he seemed to be! And how inquisitive he was! He laughed immoderately at sight of my pets, but immediately soothed my wounded feelings by stroking and patting them, and I could see that they both took a fancy to him at once. It wasn’t everybody that Teddy would sidle up to in the dear, winning way he had, or to whom Bobby would wag his approval. But perhaps they were both in a better humor than usual; for Bobby had uncovered one of the mushroom beds, and had helped himself to a few of the fungi, of which he was inordinately fond, while naughty Teddy, as several broken branches testified, had been feasting on unripe “Dutch mignonnes” and “Duke of Oldenburghs.”
“Nice animals,” said the earl. “Just the sort I would have expected your property to be, eh, Dorrie?”
“My name is Dora.”