The Countess seconded Mrs. Bretton.
“Papa shall not go out,” said she, placing a seat for herself beside her father’s arm-chair. “I will look after him. You won’t go into town, will you, papa?”
“Ay, and No,” was the answer. “If you and Mrs. Bretton are very good to me, Polly—kind, you know, and attentive; if you pet me in a very nice manner, and make much of me, I may possibly be induced to wait an hour after breakfast and see whether this razor-edged wind settles. But, you see, you give me no breakfast; you offer me nothing: you let me starve.”
“Quick! please, Mrs. Bretton, and pour out the coffee,” entreated Paulina, “whilst I take care of the Count de Bassompierre in other respects: since he grew into a Count, he has needed so much attention.”
She separated and prepared a roll.
“There, papa, are your ‘pistolets’ charged,” said she. “And there is some marmalade, just the same sort of marmalade we used to have at Bretton, and which you said was as good as if it had been conserved in Scotland—”
“And which your little ladyship used to beg for my boy—do you remember that?” interposed Mrs. Bretton. “Have you forgotten how you would come to my elbow and touch my sleeve with the whisper, ‘Please, ma’am, something good for Graham—a little marmalade, or honey, or jam?’”
“No, mamma,” broke in Dr. John, laughing, yet reddening; “it surely was not so: I could not have cared for these things.”
“Did he or did he not, Paulina?”
“He liked them,” asserted Paulina.