“If you please, my meritorious father, you will come to the door, and just smell them; and then you will have five minutes allowed you to put on your dear old dressing–gown, and the slippers worked by the Vestal virgins; five minutes by the kitchen clock, and not a book to be touched, mind. Now, donʼt they smell lovely? I put them on when I knew your knock. The first mackerel of the season, only caught this afternoon. I sent word to Mr. Pell for them. He can do what he likes with the fishermen. And you know as well as I do, papa, you can never resist a mackerel.” When John came down, half the table was covered with some of his favourite authors—not that she meant to let him read, but only because he would miss his books a great deal more than the salt–cellar—and the other half she was bleaching, and smoothing, and stroking with a snowy cloth, soft and sleek as her own bare arms, setting all things in lovely order, and looking at her father every moment, with the skirt of her frock pinned up, and her glossy hair dancing jigs on the velvet slope of her shoulders. And she made him hungrier every moment by savoury word and choice innuendo. “Worcester sauce, pa, darling, and a little of the very best butter, not mixed up with flour, you know, but melting on them, like their native element. Just see how they are browning, and not a bit of the skin come off. What is it about the rhombus, pa, and when am I to read Juvenal?” “Never, my child.” “Very well, pa, dear, you know best, of course; but I thought it was very nice about weighing Hannibal, in the Excerpta. Father, put that book down; I canʼt allow any reading. And after supper I shall expect you to spin me such a yarn, dear, to wind up the thread of your adventures.” “_Τολυπεύειν_,” said John, calmly, although he was so hungry; “the very word poor Cradock used in his rendering of that dirge— “‘_Μόχθον οὕνεκα τὸν κατʼ ἦμαρ Ἐκτολυπέσας οἴκαδε, Μισθὸν φερων, ἤνυσας._’ Oh, I forgot; ah yes, to be sure. A word, I mean, which expresses in a figurative and yet homely manner——” “Cradock, papa! Oh, father, have you been with him in London? Oh, how Aunt Doxy has cheated me! You know very well, my own father, that you cannot tell me a story. Did you go to London because poor Cradock was very, very ill?” “Yes,” said her father, those soft bright eyes beamed into his so appealingly; “my own child, your Cradock is very ill indeed.” “Not dead, father? Oh, not dead?” “No, my child; nor in any great danger, I sincerely believe, just at present.” “Then eat your supper, pa, while it is hot. I am so glad you have seen him. I am quite content with that.” She believed, or she would not have said it. And yet how far from the truth it was! “You shall tell me all after supper, my father. Thank God for His mercies to me. I am never in a hurry, dear.”