I understood the meaning of his last words, and could not help smiling at the presumptuous certainty with which he assumed that he was going to follow my fortunes.
Is it needful to say that when I mentioned what had occurred to Dr McTougall that amiable little man opened his eyes to their widest?
“You young dog!” he exclaimed, “was it grateful in you to repay all my kindness by robbing me in this sly manner of my governess—nay, I may say, of my daughter, for I have long ago considered her such, and adopted her in my heart?”
“It was not done slily, I assure you,” said I; “indeed, I fought against the catastrophe with all my might—but I—I could not help it at last; it came upon me, as it were, unexpectedly—took me by surprise.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor.
“Besides,” I added, “you can scarcely call it robbery, for are not you and I united as partners, so that instead of robbing you, I have, in reality, created another bond of union between you and Edie?”
“H’m!” said the doctor.
“Moreover,” I continued, “it happens most opportunely just now that the house opposite this one is to let. It is a much smaller and lower-rented house than this, and admirably suited for a very small family, so that if I secure it we will scarcely, I may say, have to quit your roof.”
“Ah! to be sure,” returned the doctor, falling in with my humour, “we will have the pleasure of overlooking and criticising each other and our respective households. We may sit at the windows and converse across the street in fine weather, or flatten our noses on the glass, and make faces at each other when the weather is bad. Besides, we can have a tunnel cut under the street and thus have subterranean communication at any time of the day or night—and what a charming place that would be for the children to romp in! Of course, we would require to have it made of bricks or cast-iron to prevent the rats connecting it with the sewers, but—”
A breeze of pattering feet overhead induced the doctor to pause. It increased to a gale on the staircase, to a tempest in the lobby. The door was burst open, and Jack, and Harry, and Job, and Jenny, and Dolly, with blazing cheeks and eyes, tumbled tumultuously into the room.