‘So unusually facetious, my dear sir,’ pursued the young lady, ‘that I would wish rather to know the meaning of your mirth than to be amused with its effects only.’
‘You shall know it, Miss Lucy,’ replied poor Abel. ‘Do you remember your brother?’
‘Good God, how can you ask me? No one knows better than you he was lost the very day I was born.’
‘Very true, very true,’ answered the Dominie, saddening at the recollection; ‘I was strangely oblivious; ay, ay! too true. But you remember your worthy father?’
‘How should you doubt it, Mr. Sampson? it is not so many weeks since--’
‘True, true; ay, too true,’ replied the Dominie, his Houyhnhnm laugh sinking into a hysterical giggle. ‘I will be facetious no more under these remembrances; but look at that young man!’
Bertram at this instant entered the room. ‘Yes, look at him well, he is your father’s living image; and as God has deprived you of your dear parents--O, my children, love one another!’
‘It is indeed my father’s face and form,’ said Lucy, turning very pale. Bertram ran to support her, the Dominie to fetch water to throw upon her face (which in his haste he took from the boiling tea-urn), when fortunately her colour, returning rapidly, saved her from the application of this ill-judged remedy. ‘I conjure you to tell me, Mr. Sampson,’ she said, in an interrupted yet solemn voice, ‘is this my brother?’
‘It is, it is! Miss Lucy, it is little Harry Bertram, as sure as God’s sun is in that heaven!’
‘And this is my sister?’ said Bertram, giving way to all that family affection which had so long slumbered in his bosom for want of an object to expand itself upon.