"Well, I'm--"
"Papa!"
"Hi! don't, Very. Let me breathe," cried Doctor Salado, removing a very
pretty little hand from over his mouth, and kissing the owner, as pretty
a little girl as ever stepped; though just then her pretty creamy face
was puckered into the most lovable of dimples, and there was trouble in
her great dark eyes, over which were lashes and brows as black as the
great clusters and waves of luxuriant hair.
"You shall not."
"I was only going to say `blessed.'"
"You were not, papa. You were going to use that dreadful word again."
"So I was, Very, and enough to make me," said the Doctor, passing his
hand over his high bold forehead and crown. "Why, it completely cuts
off our view of the park and the manor-house at the end of the beautiful
vista of oaks."
"Never mind, dear; we'll take to the drawing-room, and look out at the
back at the grand old pines."
"Well, upon my soul," said the Doctor again. "Of all the malicious bits
of impudence! They must have been at it all night."
"Yes, papa; I heard them knocking, and I could not sleep."
"Hang me if I don't take an axe and cut the old thing down," cried the
Doctor again, as he stood gazing out of his breakfast-room window at
where--just across the road, and exactly opposite his delightful little
cottage--half a dozen carpenters and labourers were rapidly completing a
great range of hoarding fifty feet long and full twenty high.
"You mustn't, papa. We are not in South America now."
"No. I wish it was. But--Well, that beats all! Well, I _am_--Very, my
pet, let me swear once. I shall feel so much better then."
"You shall not, papa. But what a shame!"
"Worse than that, my darling. It's all a confounded planned insult, got
up by my lord and that sneaking scoundrel of an agent," he continued, as
he watched a bill-sticker busy at work pasting placards on the new raw
deal boards just nailed on the rough pine poles. "Selling off, etc. To
be sold by auction," read the Doctor, "Guy Bunting's boots."
"Oh! is this a land of liberty, where one is to be insulted like this,
and not even allowed the British prerogative of a good honest--"
Veronica's lips were pressed upon the speaker's lips, as near as they
could get for the crisp, grey, shaggy hair of an enormous moustache, and
said,--
"You shall not say it, papa; and you are too proud and dignified to
notice such contemptible treatment. Now come and have your breakfast.
The cutlets are getting cold."
"Then Teddington Weir him!" said the Doctor.
"What do you mean, dear?"
"Never mind. Hah! I am hungry. But look here, Pussy--more sugar,
please--and milk. It's all your fault."
"It is not, papa," said Veronica, colouring a little. "It was through
your buying this cottage."
"Well, how was I to know he wanted it? Suppose the grounds do run like
a wedge into the estate. Hang the blackguardly Ahab! Can't a poor
miserable Naboth like myself have his own vineyard without his wanting
it for a garden of herbs? Bitter herbs I'll make them for him!"
"No, you will not, papa."
"Yes, I will, tyrant. The next thing will be his confounded Jezebel of
a wife setting him to--"
"Papa! I cannot sit here and listen to you," cried Veronica, flushing
deeply now. "Lady Pinemount is a sweet, lovable woman."
"How do you know?"
"Everybody says so."
"Including her son?"
"Papa dear!" cried the girl, with her eyes filling with tears.
"There, my dear, I don't want to hurt your feelings; but the old man
will never consent to it, and I'm going to forbid Mr Rolleston the
house."
Veronica was silent, but such a look of hopeless misery came into her
face that the Doctor got up from his chair and went and knelt on one
knee by his child's chair, drawing her beautiful head down on his
shoulder and softly stroking her cheek.
"And you--after turning up this pretty little nose at all the gallant
young Spanish dons and settlers about the Pampas--to come and strike
your colours like this, Very! I say, are you so very fond of him?"
"I--I think so, papa; I can't help it."
"Humph! But he's an Englishman born and bred, and you're half a
Spaniard, Very."
"But you are an Englishman, papa."
"I suppose so. But thirty years in South America seem to have altered
me. Yah! hammer away. What a blackguardly trick of his father!"
"Don't talk about it, papa. Mr Rolleston said Lord Pinemount was
furious with his steward for not bidding higher and buying this estate."
"More fool he! I'd have bid his head off. He'd never have got it."
"And he was very angry, too, because you refused his offer afterwards to
take it off your hands."
"I don't care for his anger. I came over to England to end my days in
peace. I bought the Sandleighs, and I mean to keep it."
"Papa!"
"There, then--there, don't cry, and I will not make use of bad language
about that hoarding; but if this is the behaviour of an English
nobleman, I'm glad I'm plain Doctor Salado. Now breakfast; and my
coffee's cold."