"I haven't written to him for a month. It's not pleasant the letters I
have to write, Pen, and I can't make them pleasant. Up, Tommykin, and put
on your cap." Tommykin jumps up. "Put on your cap, and tell them to take
off your pinafore, tell grandmamma----"
At that name Tommykin begins to cry.
"Look at that!" says Clive, commencing to speak in the French language,
which the child interrupts by calling out in that tongue. "I speak also
French, papa."
"Well, my child! You will like to come out with papa, and Betsy can dress
you." He flings off his own paint-stained shooting-jacket as he talks,
takes a frock-coat out of a carved wardrobe, and a hat from a helmet on
the shelf. He is no longer the handsome splendid boy of old times. Can
that be Clive, with that haggard face and slouched handkerchief? "I am
not the dandy I was, Pen," he says bitterly.
A little voice is heard crying overhead--and giving a kind of gasp the
wretched father stops in some indifferent speech he was trying to make.
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