“Are you afraid? Do you think I would do you any harm?” said the little gentleman. “It is quite the other way. Do you know I have brought some sweetmeats over the sea, I can’t tell you how far, expressly for you.”
“For me!” Marie was fairly roused out of her apathy. “But you didn’t know even our names till you came here.”
“Ah! there’s no telling how much I knew,” said the stranger with a smile.
He had risen up, and he was not very formidable. Though he was not handsome, the smile on his face made it quite pleasant. And to have sweetmeats brought, as he said, all that way, expressly for you, was a very ingratiating circumstance. Marie tried to whisper this wonderful piece of information to Bell when her interview with Brown was over. But Bell had returned to all her dignity of (temporary) head of the house.
“If you will follow me,” she said, trying to look, her sister said afterwards, as if she were in long dresses, and putting on an air of portentous importance, “we will take you to see the house. Brown, you can come with us and open the doors.”
The visitor laughed. He was very little taller than Bell, as she swept on with dignity at the head of the procession. Brown, not quite satisfied to have his rôle taken out of his hands, yet unwilling to leave the children in unknown company, and a little curious himself, and desirous to see what was going on, followed with some perturbation. And there never was a housekeeper more grandiose in description than Bell proved herself, or more eloquently confused in her dates and details. They went over all the house, even into the bedrooms, for the stranger’s curiosity was inexhaustible. He learned all sorts of particulars about the family, lingering over every picture and every chamber. When the boys came in, calling loudly for their sisters, he put his glass in his eye and examined them, as they rushed up the great staircase, where a whispered but quite audible, consultation took place.
“I say, we want our dinner,” cried Harry. “We’re after a wasps’ nest down in the Brentwood Hollow, and if you don’t make haste, you’ll lose all the fun.”
“Oh, a wasps’ nest!” cried Bell; “but we can’t—we can’t: for here is a gentleman who says he is a relation, and we’re showing him over the house.”
“Such a funny little gentleman,” said Marie, “and he says he’s got some sweetmeats (what does one mean by sweetmeats?) for me.”
“I don’t care for your gentleman; I want my dinner,” cried Harry, whose boots were all over mud from the Brentwood swamp. They both brought in a whiff of fresh air like a fresh breeze into the stately house.