It may be my imagination, but I cannot help fancying that there is a tone of slight and repressed exultation in his voice; and also that a look of hope and bright expectation is passing from one to another of the faces round me. All but Barbara's! Barbara always understands.
"All alone?" cries Tou Tou, opening her ugly little eyes to their widest stretch. "Nobody but the servants in the house with you? Will not you be very much afraid of ghosts?"
"She need never be alone, unless she chooses," says Bobby, winking with dexterous slightness at the others; "there is the beauty of having three kind little brothers!"
"The moment you feel at all lonely," says Algy, emphasizing his remarks by benevolent but emphatic strokes with his flat hand on my shoulder, "send for us! one of us is sure to be handy! If it will be any comfort to Sir Roger, I shall be most happy to promise him that I will keep all his horses in exercise next winter!"
"I am sorrier than I was before," says Bobby, reflectively, "that the heavy rains have drowned so many of the young birds."
"O Nancy!" cries Tou Tou, ecstatically clasping her hands, "have a Christmas-tree!"
"And a dance after it!" adds Bobby, beginning to whistle a waltz-tune.
"And Sir Roger's not being at home will be a good excuse for not asking father," cries Algy, catching the prevailing excitement.
"I will not have one of you!" cry I, rising with a face pale, as I feel with anger—with flashing eyes and a trembling voice, "not one of you shall enter his doors, except Barbara!—I hate you all!—you are all g—g—glad that he is going, and I—I never was so sorry for any thing in my life before!"
I end in a passion of tears. There is a silence of consternation on the late so jubilant assembly.