“Charlie is shy. He has been used to no one but me,” murmured the mother, raising her eyes with an appealing look in them to mine.
“Madam, I fear you are spoiling him,” said Lord Welbury sharply. “The other child took to me at once, but this—”
“Send for the other, sir,” I suggested, and presently “the little heir,” with whom I had previously made acquaintance, was brought in by his nurse. The latter sat down in a far corner with some knitting. The child—as apparently he had been accustomed to do—ran to the old man and scrambled at his knee. “I love ‘ou, I love ‘ou,” he cried.
Lord Welbury’s face was radiant.
“Now, Charlie, my man,” said he, as the other child after his affectionate greeting scampered off to play beside his nurse.
Charlie was placed on his grandfather’s knee.
“Say ‘I love you,’” whispered Mrs. Wilton, as she tried to clasp her own child’s arms about Lord Welbury’s neck.
“Say I love ‘ou,” echoed the boy mechanically; then dropped his head and lay quite placidly as though he slept.
“Ha, ha, the young rascal! He’s making himself at home at last,” observed Lord Welbury, well pleased. “And now that I come to see him more closely, he’s not unlike what his father was at the same age, only quieter. Do you know he almost strikes me as being a little dull. Have you found him so, madam?”
“I have been too sad a companion for him, sir. I know—I feel it now,” sighed the poor mother, her eyes wandering from her own boy to follow the antics of the other, who astride a stick, was careering merrily about the room.