“Well done, Trotty Veck!” Ewen Hooper smiled at her affectionately. “But won’t it interfere with your work?”
“Not a bit. It will help it. Father!—I’m going to earn a lot before long. If it only didn’t take such a long time to grow up!” said Nora impatiently. “One ought to be as old as one feels—and I feel quite twenty-one!”
“That’s all wrong. One should be young—and taste being young, every moment, every day that one can. I wish I’d done it—now that I’m getting old.”
“You’re not old!” cried Nora. “You’re not, father! You’re not to say it!”
And kneeling down by him, she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and put one of his long gaunt hands to her lips.
Her affection was very sweet to him, but it could not comfort him. There are few things, indeed, in which the old can be comforted by the young—the old, who know too much, both of life and themselves.
“Dear Trotty Veck, you must go to bed, and let me do my work. But—one moment!” He laid a hand on her shoulder, and abruptly asked her whether she thought her Cousin Constance was in love with Douglas Falloden. “Your mother’s always talking to me about it,” he said, with a wearied perplexity.
“I don’t know,” said Nora, frowning. “But I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Then I shall have to make some enquiries,” said Connie’s guardian, with resignation. “She’s a masterful young woman. But she can be very sweet when she likes. Do you see what she gave me to-day?”
He pointed to a beautiful Viennese edition of Aeschylus, in three sumptuous volumes, which had just appeared and was now lying on the Reader’s table.
Nora took it up with a cry of pleasure. She had her father’s passion for books.
“She heard me say to Sorell, apparently, that I would give my eyes for it, and couldn’t afford it. That was a week ago. And to-day, after luncheon, she stole in here like a mouse—you none of you saw or heard her—holding the books behind her—and looking as meek as milk. You would have thought she was a child, coming to say she was sorry! And she gave me the books in the prettiest way—just like her mother!—as though all the favour came from me. I’m beginning to be very fond of her. She’s so nice to your old father. I say, Nora!”—he held her again—“you and I have got to prevent her from marrying the wrong man!”