"Where are the shrimps?" asked Noel, and he so lengthened the word that it sounded almost as terribly in Mollie's ears as Mrs. Siddons' "Give me the dagger!" for so much depends on expression, and if one is only melodramatic, even the words "shrimps" can be as sibilant and aggressive as the hissing of snakes.
"Oh, dear, how tiresome you are, Noel!" returned Mollie, quite sharply for her, for she was housekeeper, and the strain and responsibility were overwhelming at times, especially when her poor little purse was empty. "I could not afford them, really, Noel," she continued, welling into tenderness at the thought of his disappointment. "There were some nice brown ones, but I dared not get them, for I had only twopence left, so I bought watercresses instead."
"Ask a blessing, my child, and I will forgive you;" and then, much to his sister's relief, Noel subsided, and began cutting the bread, while under cover of the table-cloth, Waveney slipped sixpence into Mollie's hand, and made a movement with her lips suggestive of "to-morrow;" and Mollie nodded as she poured out the tea.
Noel had a volume of "Eugene Aram" propped up before him as he ate, but it did not engross him so utterly that he could not interpolate the conversation whenever he pleased, and it pleased him to do so very often.
Mollie was giving a graphic and heart-breaking account of the way in which she and her father had packed the precious picture, "and how it had been bumped three times while they carried it down the narrow stairs." "I quite missed the dear old thing, Wave," she went on, "and the studio looked so dull without it. Noel was so absurd; he threw an old shoe after it for good luck, and it nearly knocked father's hat off—and then he bolted indoors, and there was father looking at me so astonished, and he was not quite pleased, I could see that, so I said, 'It is not me dad, it is the other boy.'"
"Yes, and it was real mean of you," grumbled Noel; "but there, what are you to expect from a woman? Poor old padre, he will be precious tired with hauling along 'King Canute,' and it will bump all the worse going upstairs."
"Oh, Noel!" exclaimed both the girls, in a shrill crescendo of dismay. "You don't really believe that the dealers will refuse 'King Canute'?" ejaculated Mollie. "Father has worked so hard at it, and it is really his best picture."
Noel shrugged his shoulders; then he pointed his chin in an argumentative way.
"The dealers buy awful rubbish sometimes, but they won't buy this. Every kid knows how the old buffer gave his courtiers a lesson, but no one wants to be always looking on while he does it; the public hates that sort of thing, you know. I told father so, over and over again, but he would not listen. 'Why don't you try something lively and less historical?' I said to him. '"The Two Grave-diggers" in Hamlet, or "Touchstone and Audrey." We might get Corporal Marks to sit for "Touchstone"—the public would think that fetching.' But no, nothing but that solemn old Dane would suit him—the Wards are terribly obstinate. I am my father's son, and speak feelingly;" and then Noel shouldered his book and marched back to the study.
"Do you think Noel is right?" whispered Mollie. "He is very clever, for all his ridiculous nonsense, and I am not quite sure whether 'King Canute' will really interest people."