Then calling Jessie, who was in the room, to his side, Mr. Harrington took her in his lap, and said:
“You remind me very much of a little blue-eyed, flaxen-haired girl I have in the city.”
“Why, have you a little girl?” Mr. Harrington, asked the young ladies.
“Yes, two of them,” he answered.
“Oh, how I doat on children!” exclaimed Miss Calista.
“Cousin Agnes, what is the meaning of doat?” screamed Master Frank, running up to Agnes, who just then entered the room.
“What is it to doat on any one?”
“It is to love them very dearly;” answered Agnes quietly.
“Ho! C’listy says she doats on children—she doats on us, don’t she Rosa?” and Master Frank laughed such a laugh of derision, that Mr. Harrington was obliged to say something very funny to little Jessie, who was still sitting on his knee, in order to have an excuse for laughing too.
Miss Calista fairly trembled with concealed rage, and soon succeeded in having Master Frank sent off to bed. Indeed, Frank was the cause of so much mortification to Miss Calista, that she would gladly have banished him too from the parlor, but he was lawless, and no one in the house could do anything with him but Agnes.