“Oh, no!” I said. “You know I love opera, and, thanks to you both, I am entirely rested and comfortable about Bobby.”
Mrs. Warren ran up-stairs to dress while the carriage was being made ready. As for me, there was nothing to do but to put on my bonnet and cloak, so I sat still, and Commodore Warren drew up a chair in front of the sofa where I sat.
“This is like old times,” he said.
I tried to keep them back, but somehow I felt the tears starting to my eyes.
He got up and walked to the other end of the room, and brought a book of drawings of queer places and people he had seen in his journeys around the world. While he was showing them to me he remarked:
“I’ve a box somewhere of curious toys picked up in various parts of the world at different times, and I think Master Bobby would be interested in them. We’ll get Mrs. Warren to look it up, and I’ll ask you to be kind enough to take it to him with my compliments. It may—in a measure—recompense him for his mother’s absence to-night.”
“Bobby will be delighted—if he is not robbing your children.”
“My children,” he laughed, “have a surfeit of toys from the four corners of the earth. They have almost lost appreciation of such things. By the way, has Nell”—he caught himself with a laugh—“Mrs. Grey, I should say, any little ones of her own?”
“Bobby is the only baby in the family; but he is enough to go around.”
“I remember with profound gratitude the many expressions I used to receive of Nell’s regard in those old days, and seeing you brings them back. Oh, forgive me—I know there have been many changes.”