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'And wha is't tou's gotten, Wullie, lad? said half a score of voices, while all eyes were turned on your humble servant, who kept the best countenance he could, though not quite easy at becoming the centre to which all eyes were pointed. 'I ken him by his hemmed cravat, said one fellow; 'it's Gil Hobson, the souple tailor frae Burgh.
I speak never a word; but I rise up hastily, and, letting my novel fall heavily prone on the pit of its stomach at the punt-bottom, I take a flying leap to shore toward shore, I should rather say for I am never a good jumper Tou Tou's lean spider-legs can always outstride me and now I fall an inch or two short, and draw one leg out booted with river-mud. But I pay no heed.
To-morrow he will probably be clamoring for Tou Tou's company." "Brat!" says Barbara, laughing, "where has the analogy between me and the man who pulled up the window in the train for the old woman gone to?" "Mother said I was to look as nice as I could," say I, casting a rueful glance at the tea-board, at the large plum loaf, at the preparations for temperate conviviality.
"I have been making so many guesses as to what it can be?" "Have you?" he says, looking up. "I dare say. Well, I will tell you. Do you remember I dare say you do not my once mentioning to you that I had some property in the West Indies in Antigua?" I nod. "To be sure I do; I recollect I had not an idea where Antigua was, and I looked out for it at once in Tou Tou's atlas."
"What will you call him, Nancy?" asks the Brat, inquisitively. "What shall we call him?" "He will be Tou Tou's brother," cries Bobby, with a yell of delight. "Hush!" says Barbara, apprehensively, "he will hear you." "No he will not," I answer, composedly.
I have sat down, and Sir Roger is walking up and down, with a restlessness unlike his usual repose; on his face there is a vexed and thwarted look, that is unfamiliar to me. The old parrot sits in the sun, outside his cage, scratching his head, and chuckling to himself. Tou Tou's voice comes ringing from the garden.
I take half a dozen hurried turns along the floor, and try to think of all our most depressing family themes father; Algy's college-bills; Tou Tou's shrunk face and thin legs; nothing will do. When I stop before the glass and consult it, that hysterical smile is there still.
Algy indeed suggested that in order to bring them into greater harmony, Tou Tou shall clothe her thin legs with long petticoats, or Barbara abridge her garments to Tou Tou's length; but the proposition has met with as little favor in the family's eyes as did Squire Thornhill's proposal, that every gentleman should sit on a lady's lap, in the Vicar of Wakefield.
Since then, I have grown used to seeing father's austere face, unbent into difficult suavity, at the opposite end of the dinner-table to me, to hearing the well-known old sound of Tou Tou's shrieks of mixed anguish and delight, as Bobby rushes after her in headlong pursuit, down the late so silent passages; and to looking complacently from one to another of the holiday faces round the table, where Barbara and I have sat, during the last noiseless month, in stillest dialogue or preoccupied silence.
I love noise. You may think that I have odd taste; but I love Bobby's stentor laugh, and Tou Tou's ear-piercing yells. I even forget to think whether their mirth passes the appointed bounds I had set it. I have mislaid my receipt of cold repression. My heart goes out to them.
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