But, catching sight of a certain frank outlook in the little face which reminded him of his friend Maverick, he felt his heart stirred within him, and in his grave way dropped a kiss upon her forehead, while he took both her hands in his.
"This, then, is little Adaly?"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Adèle, merrily, and, turning round to her new-found friends, says,—"My new papa calls me Adaly!"
The straightforward parson was, indeed, as inaccessible to French words as to French principles. Adèle had somehow a smack in it of the Gallic Pandemonium: Adaly, to his ear, was a far honester sound.
And the child seemed to fancy it,—whether for its novelty, or the kindliness that beamed on her from the gravest face she had ever seen, it would be hard to say.
"Call me Adaly, and I will call you New Papa," said she.
And though the parson was not a bargaining man, every impulse of his heart went to confirm this arrangement. It was flattering to his self-love, if not to his principles, to have apparent sanction to his prejudices against French forms of speech; and the "New Papa" on the lips of this young girl touched him to the quick. Wifeless men are more easily accessible to demonstrations of even apparent affection on the part of young girls than those whose sympathies are hedged about by matrimonial relations.
From all this it chanced that the best possible understanding was speedily established between the Doctor and his little ward from beyond the seas. For an hour after his arrival, the little creature hung upon his chair, asking questions about her new home, about the schools, about her playmates, patting the great hand of the Doctor with her little fingers, and reminding him sadly of days utterly gone.
Mrs. Brindlock, with her woman's curiosity, seizes an occasion, before they leave, to say privately to the Doctor,—
"Benjamin, the child must have a strange mother to allow this long separation, and the little creature so loving as she is."