'No, father!'
'No, not you, of course; you're a woman - almost,' said the Doctor.
'By-the-by,' and he looked into the pretty face, still close to his, 'I suppose it's YOUR birth-day.'
'No! Do you really, father?' cried his pet daughter, pursing up her red lips to be kissed.
'There! Take my love with it,' said the Doctor, imprinting his upon them; 'and many happy returns of the - the idea! - of the day.
The notion of wishing happy returns in such a farce as this,' said the Doctor to himself, 'is good! Ha! ha! ha!'
Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great philosopher, and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke; as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by any rational man.His system of belief had been, in the beginning, part and parcel of the battle-ground on which he lived, as you shall presently understand.
'Well! But how did you get the music?' asked the Doctor.
'Poultry-stealers, of course! Where did the minstrels come from?'
'Alfred sent the music,' said his daughter Grace, adjusting a few simple flowers in her sister's hair, with which, in her admiration of that youthful beauty, she had herself adorned it half-an-hour before, and which the dancing had disarranged.
'Oh! Alfred sent the music, did he?' returned the Doctor.
'Yes.He met it coming out of the town as he was entering early.
The men are travelling on foot, and rested there last night; and as it was Marion's birth-day, and he thought it would please her, he sent them on, with a pencilled note to me, saying that if I thought so too, they had come to serenade her.'
'Ay, ay,' said the Doctor, carelessly, 'he always takes your opinion.'