I burst into laughter: the reader may have done the same. "My landlady professes to sew them on, Annabel, but the shirts often go without buttons. Sometimes I sew one on myself."
"If you had one off now, and it was not Sunday, I would sew it on for you," said Annabel. "Why do you laugh?"
"At your concern about my domestic affairs, my dear little girl."
"But there's a gentleman who lives in lodgings and comes here sometimes to dine with papa—he is older than you—and he says it is the worst trouble of life to have no one to sew his buttons on. Who takes care of you if you are ill?" she added, after another pause.
"As there is no one to take care of me, I cannot afford to be ill, Annabel. I am generally quite well."
"I am glad of that. Was your father a lawyer, like papa?"
"No. He was a clergyman."
"Oh, don't turn," she cried; "I want to show you my birds. We have an aviary, and they are beautiful. Papa lets me call them mine; and some of them are mine in reality, for they were bought for me. Mamma does not care for birds."
Presently I asked Annabel her age.
"Fourteen."