They were standing before a gray, unpretending post, on which was fastened a sort of wooden plate. The child laughed, and said that this was the sundial.
“Oh, fie!” he retorted, angrily; “you are mocking me.”
“Why should I want to mock you?” she asked; “you have never done me any harm.” And then she repeated her assertion that this was the sundial, and nothing else, and she also pointed out to him the hand, a miserable rusty piece of metal, which stuck out from the middle of the dial and threw its shadow just on number six, which was written there among other figures.
“Oh, this is too stupid,” he said, and turned away. The sundial in the garden of the White House was the first great disappointment of his life.
When he returned to the arbor with his new friend, he found a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with bushy whiskers there, who wore a gray shooting-coat, and whose eyes seemed to twinkle merrily.
“Who is that?” asked Paul, timidly, hiding behind his friend.
She laughed and said, “That is my papa; you need not be afraid of him.”
And, shouting with joy, she jumped on the strange man’s knee.
Then he thought to himself, would he ever dare to jump on _his_ papa’s knee, and from this he concluded that all fathers were not alike.
But the man in the shooting-coat caressed his child, kissed her on both cheeks, and let her ride on his knees.
“See! Elsbeth has got a playfellow,” said the kind, strange lady, pointing towards Paul, who, hidden by the foliage, glanced shyly towards the arbor.
“Just come here, my boy,” the man called out merrily and snapped his fingers.
“Come--here, on the other knee; there is room enough for you,” called out the child; and when, with a questioning glance at his mother, he crept timidly nearer, the strange man seized him, put him on his other knee, and then they had a merry race.
He had lost all fear, and when freshly-baked cakes were put on the table, he fell to bravely. His mother stroked his hair and warned him not to eat too much. She spoke very softly, and kept looking down upon the ground before her. And then the children were allowed to go to the bushes and pick gooseberries for themselves.
“Are you really called Elsbeth?” he asked his friend, and as she said “Yes,” he expressed his astonishment that she had the same name as his mother.