"At your service, madam," said he in very good English.
"And he does speak English! Who knows but he understood all I said, and what the parrot said too. Poll, you go into your cage! 'At your service, madam!' And did you hear it, Lucy? No errand-boy ever spoke in the loikes o' that before! I'd think h'd been brought up among the quality. It maybe he's a Fairy Shoemaker, spaking the queen's court-language, and no errand-boy at all!"
A bell sounded up-stairs, and the two children ran back.
"Oh, mother, never was there a boy like that!" said Charlie.
"Well," said Mrs. Van Buren, "you shall tell your father how you found little Sky-High--it will be a pretty after-supper story. I want you to think kindly of him, for if he does well he is to stay with us a year."
The children found their father in the dining-room; and as they kissed him they both cried, "Oh, oh!"
"What is it now?" asked Mr. Van Buren. "What has happened to-day?"
"Wait until after supper," said Mrs. Van Buren; "then they shall tell you of a curious event in the kitchen. There really is something to tell," she added, smiling.
As Mr. Van Buren was a prudent, wise, and good-natured man, he left all the affairs of housekeeping to his wife. He had so seldom been "below stairs" that he never had even made the acquaintance of Polly, the lively bird of the kitchen. The kitten sometimes came up to visit him; on which occasions she simply purred, and sank down to rest on his knee.
After supper was over, Mr. Van Buren caught Lucy up.
"And now what amusing thing is it that my little girl has to tell me--something new that Nora has told you of the Fairy Shoemaker?"
"There's really a wonderful thing down in the kitchen, father," said Lucy; "wonderfuller than anything in the Fairy Shoemaker tales."
"Down from the sun, father, and Nora says it came in a coach!"
"It came from the Consul's," she said--"from Consul Bradley's."
"Has Consul Bradley been here?" he asked, thinking some Chinese curio had been shipped over. Consul Bradley was a Chinese consular agent, a man of considerable wealth, with a large knowledge of the world, and a friend of the Van Buren family.
"No," said Mrs. Van Buren, "but his coach-man has brought me a kitchen-boy."