(not to mention himself, as he is dead), what do you suppose he did it for?”
“Impossible to say, my dear. As I have told you time out of number since his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred words with the old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his whim succeeded. For he certainly did it.”
“And I was stamping my foot and screaming, when he first took notice of me; was I?” said Bella, contemplating the ankle before mentioned.
“You were stamping your little foot, my dear, and screaming with your little voice, and laying into me with your little bonnet, which you had snatched off for the purpose,” returned her father, as if the remembrance gave a relish to the rum; “you were doing this one Sunday morning when I took you out, because I didn’t go the exact way you wanted, when the old gentleman, sitting on a seat near, said, ‘That’s a nice girl; that’s a very nice girl; a promising girl!’ And so you were, my dear.”