As a great deal of flesh would have been needed to make a fat man of
him, his frame being so large, he was not fat; his face was a large
framework too, looking, by the smallness of the features and the glow
in the hollow of the cheek, more fitted to withstand assaults of the
weather than to express sentiments and emotions, or to respond to them
in others.
"It is a great pleasure that you have come," he said, "for both of us."
Rachel murmured in obedience to her father's glance.
"We'll do our best to make you comfortable. And Ridley. We think it
an honour to have charge of him. Pepper'll have some one to contradict
him--which I daren't do. You find this child grown, don't you? A young
woman, eh?"
Still holding Helen's hand he drew his arm round Rachel's shoulder, thus
making them come uncomfortably close, but Helen forbore to look.
"You think she does us credit?" he asked.
"Oh yes," said Helen.
"Because we expect great things of her," he continued, squeezing his
daughter's arm and releasing her. "But about you now." They sat down
side by side on the little sofa. "Did you leave the children well?
They'll be ready for school, I suppose. Do they take after you or
Ambrose? They've got good heads on their shoulders, I'll be bound?"
At this Helen immediately brightened more than she had yet done, and
explained that her son was six and her daughter ten.
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