He used such long words, he puzzled me. (I must tell you that I have been helped here and there to write things that grandpapa said by some one who knows quite well his sort of way, otherwise I couldn't have got it quite right, though I remember it all in my own way.) I looked up and said, "Grandpapa, I don't understand you."
Then his face grew nicer again, and he stooped down to kiss us in his usual way, saying to me as he did so, "Never mind; such understanding comes soon enough."
And Tib, who, I suppose, had been gathering courage all this time, then looked up, and said very prettily—Tib is very pretty, you know, and that makes what she says pretty too, I think—
"Grandpapa, perhaps we could understand some things—nice things—better than you think. We do understand that you're very good to us—it was very good of you to let us come here. We are so happy!"
Grandpapa put his hand under Tib's chin, and raised her face so that he could see straight into her blue eyes.
"Has any one been putting that into your head, Mercedes?" he said, almost sternly. "The truth, now, child—for Heaven's sake let me see if you are true! Can she be with those eyes—those very same eyes?" he added to himself, so low that no one but I—for I have dreadfully quick ears—heard it. Tib didn't; she told me so afterwards, but that was perhaps because she was thinking so what she should answer. But she looked up fearlessly, and she didn't get red.
"Mrs. Munt has been speaking to us very nicely, grandpapa," she said. "But she didn't tell me to say anything to you—oh no, grandpapa. All she did was to make us think perhaps better than we have ever done before how very good you are to us;" and then, with the last words Tib's courage began to go away, and the tears came welling up into her eyes.
Grandpapa looked at her still for a minute, and then he said quietly—
"What I do is no more than you have a right to. Still, at your age the less thought about rights—and wrongs too—the better, no doubt. And so you are happy here?"
"Very," we all replied, heartily. And then Gerald—oh, that tiresome boy!—must needs add—