“Well, my dear, I’ll cut back and ask for leave.”
“But before you cut back,” said Bella, who had already taken him by the chin, pulled his hat off, and begun to stick up his hair in her old way, “do say that you are sure I am giddy and inconsiderate, but have never really slighted you, Pa.”
“My dear, I say it with all my heart. And might I likewise observe,” her father delicately hinted, with a glance out at window, “that perhaps it might be calculated to attract attention, having one’s hair publicly done by a lovely woman in an elegant turnout in Fenchurch Street?”
Bella laughed and put on his hat again. But when his boyish figure bobbed away, its shabbiness and cheerful patience smote the tears out of her eyes. “I hate that Secretary for thinking it of me,” she said to herself, “and yet it seems half true!”
Back came her father, more like a boy than ever, in his release from school. “All right, my dear. Leave given at once. Really very handsomely done!”
“Now where can we find some quiet place, Pa, in which I can wait for you while you go on an errand for me, if I send the carriage away?”
It demanded cogitation. “You see, my dear,” he explained, “you really have become such a very lovely woman, that it ought to be a very quiet place.” At length he suggested, “Near the garden up by the Trinity House on Tower Hill.” So, they were driven there, and Bella dismissed the chariot; sending a pencilled note by it to Mrs. Boffin, that she was with her father.
“Now, Pa, attend to what I am going to say, and promise and vow to be obedient.”
“I promise and vow, my dear.”