‘Did you find the house easily?’

‘why then, not over and above easy, master,’ said Kit.

‘Of course you have come back hungry?’

‘Why, then, I do consider myself rather so, master,’ was the answer.

The lad had a remarkable manner of standing sideways as he spoke, and thrusting his head forward over his shoulder, as if he could not get at his voice without that accompanying action. I think he would have amused one anywhere, but the child’s exquisite enjoyment of his oddity, and the relief it was to find that there was something she associated with merriment in a place that appeared so unsuited to her, were quite irresistible. It was a great point too that Kit himself was flattered by the sensation he created, and after several efforts to preserve his gravity, burst into a loud roar, and so stood with his mouth wide open and his eyes nearly shut, laughing violently.

The old man had again relapsed into his former abstraction and took no notice of what passed, but I remarked that when her laugh was over, the child’s bright eyes were dimmed with tears, called forth by the fullness of heart with which she welcomed her uncouth favourite after the little anxiety of the night. As for Kit himself (whose laugh had been all the time one of that sort which very little would change into a cry) he carried a large slice of bread and meat and a mug of beer into a corner, and applied himself to disposing of them with great voracity.

‘Ah!’ said the old man turning to me with a sigh as if I had spoken to him but that moment, ‘you don’t know what you say when you tell me that I don’t consider her.’

‘You must not attach too great weight to a remark founded on first appearances, my friend,’ said I.

‘No,’ returned the old man thoughtfully, ‘no. Come hither, Nell.’

The little girl hastened from her seat, and put her arm about his neck.

‘Do I love thee, Nell?’ said he. ‘Say — do I love thee, Nell, or no?’

The child only answered by her caresses, and laid her head upon his breast.

‘Why dost thou sob?’ said the grandfather, pressing her closer to him and glancing towards me. ‘Is it because thou know’st I love thee, and dost not like that I should seem to doubt it by my question? Well, well — then let us say I love thee dearly.’

‘Indeed, indeed you do,’ replied the child with great earnestness, ‘Kit knows you do.’

Kit, who in despatching his bread and meat had been swallowing two thirds of his knife at every mouthful with the coolness of a juggler, stopped short in his operations on being thus appealed to, and bawled ‘Nobody isn’t such a fool as to say he doesn’t,’ after which he incapacitated himself for further conversation by taking a most prodigious sandwich at one bite.

‘She is poor now’ — said the old man patting the child’s cheek, ‘but I say again that the time is coming when she shall be rich. It has been a long time coming, but it must come at last; a very long time, but it surely must come. It has come to other men who do nothing but waste and riot. When will it come to me!’

‘I am very happy as I am, grandfather,’ said the child.

‘Tush, tush!’ returned the old man, ‘thou dost not know — how should’st thou!’ Then he muttered again between his teeth, ‘The time must come, I am very sure it must. It will be all the better for coming late;’