Having listened to and disbelieved the explanation of his absence, father leads the way into supper, but the little incident has taken the bloom off his suavity.
Sir Roger has deposited the bag—still wrapped in its paper coverings—on a chair, in a modest and unobtrusive corner of the dining-room, ready for presentation. He did this just before prayers. As we enter the room, father's eyes fall on it.
"What is that?" he cries, pointing with his forefinger, and turning severely to the boys. "How many times have I told you that I will not have parcels left about, littering the whole place? Off with it!"
"If you please, father," say I, in a very small and starved voice, "it is not the boys', it is mine."
"Yours, is it?" with a sudden change of tone, and return to amenity. "Oh, all right!" (Then, with a little accent of sudden jocosity)—"One of your foreign purchases, eh?"
We sit round the snowy table, in the pleasant light of the shaded lamps, eating chicken-salad, and abasing and rifling the great red pyramids of strawberries and raspberries, but talking not much. We young ones never can talk out loud before father. He has never heard our voices raised much above a whisper. I do not think he has an idea what fine, loud, Billingsgate voices his children really have. He has said grace—we always have a longer, gratefuller grace than usual on Sundays—and has risen to go.
"Now for it!" cries Bobby, wildly excited, and giving me an awful dig in the ribs with his elbow.
"Shall I get it?" asks the general, in an encouraging whisper. "Cheer up, Nancy! do not look so white! it is all right."
He rises and fetches it, slips it quickly out of its coverings, and puts it into my hand. Father has reached the door, I run after him.
"Father!" cry I, in a choked and trembling voice. "Stop!"