One day Harry came downstairs with a smile on his face. “There is the most ludicrous scene going on below; come and look, Milly,” he said, drawing me to the stairs. I peeped down, and there, to be sure, I saw a reason for the sound of talking I had heard for a few minutes past. Lizzie was sitting on the stair, pondering deeply, with a perplexed face, over a large book spread out on the step above her. She was holding baby fast in one arm, and staving off his attempts to snatch at the leaves of the book. Leaning on the bannisters regarding her, and holding forth most volubly in an unknown tongue, was our fat friend; and between every two or three words he pointed to the book, making a sort of appeal to it. The contrast between the two--she silent and bewildered, confused by her efforts to restrain baby and comprehend the book--he, the vast full figure of him, so voluble, so good-humoured, so complacent, talking with his fat arms and fingers, his gestures, and every movement he made--talking with such confidence that language which nobody understood--was almost as irresistible to me as to Harry. We stood looking down at them, extremely amused and wondering. Then Lizzie, failing to comprehend the book, and hearing herself addressed so energetically, raised her round eyes, round with amazement, to the speaker’s face. The unknown tongue awed Lizzie; she contemplated him with speechless wonder and dismay; until at last, when the speaker made an evident close appeal to her, with a natural oratory which she could not mistake, unintelligible as was its meaning, her amazement burst forth in words. “Eh, man, what _div_ ye mean?” cried Lizzie, in the extremity of her puzzled wonder. It was the climax of the scene. Though I thrust Harry back into the room instantly, that his laughter might not be heard, and smothered my own as best I could, the sound caught Lizzie’s watchful ears. In another moment she had reached the top of the stairs, breathless, with her charge in her arms. The puzzled look had not left Lizzie’s eyes, but she was deeply abashed and ashamed of herself. Harry’s laughter did not mend the matter, of course. She dropped baby in my arms, and twisted herself into all her old awkward contortions. I had to send her away and dismiss Harry into the other room. Poor Lizzie had never possessed sufficient courage to permit herself to be accosted by the dreadful foreigner before. However, we were not less amused when we heard what Mrs. Goldsworthy would have called “the rights of it.” Lizzie, with great resolution, determined to have herself exculpated, came to me with her statement as soon as she was quite assured that “the Captain” was out of the way.