hung down her head, and said “—do;” at least no more was audible.
But there was something comfortable and encouraging in the grasp of the strong large hand over the foolish little fingers; and he quite gave them to his son, whose shake was a real treat; the contact with anything young was like meeting a follow-countryman in a foreign land, though neither as yet spoke.
She found out that the boy’s name was Ernest, and that his father was taking him to school, but had come to arrange some business matters for her aunts upon the way. She listened with interest to Lord de la Poer’s voice, for she liked it, and was sure he was a greater friend there than any she had before seen. He was talking about Giles—that was her uncle, the Colonel in India; and she first gathered from what was passing that her uncle’s eldest and only surviving son, an officer in his own regiment, had never recovered a wound he had received at the relief of Lucknow, and that if he did not get better at Simlah, where his mother had just taken him, his father thought of retiring and bringing him home, though all agreed that it would be a very unfortunate thing that the Colonel should be obliged to resign his command before getting promoted; but they fully thought he would do so, for this was the last of his children; another son had been killed in the Mutiny, and two or three little girls had been born and died in India.
Kate had never known this. Her aunts never told her anything, nor talked over family affairs before her; and she was opening her ears most eagerly, and turning her quick bright eyes from one speaker to the other with such earnest attention, that the guest turned kindly to her, and said, “Do you remember your uncle?”
“Oh dear no! I was a little baby when he went away.”
Kate never used dear as an adjective except at the beginning of a letter, but always, and very unnecessarily, as an interjection; and this time it was so emphatic as to bring Lady Barbara’s eyes on her.
“Did you see either Giles or poor Frank before they went out to him?”
“Oh dear no!”
This time the dear was from the confusion that made her always do the very thing she ought not to do.
“No; my niece has been too much separated from her own relations,” said Lady Barbara, putting this as an excuse for the “Oh dears.”
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