He still seemed not to see or to feel her; but by-and-by, he lifted her to his knee; she nestled against him, and though neither looked at nor spoke to the other for an hour following, I suppose both were satisfied.
During tea, the minute thing's movements and behaviour gave, as usual, full occupation to the eye.

First she directed Warren, as he placed the chairs.
"Put papa's chair here, and mine near it, between papa and Mrs.
Bretton: _I_ must hand his tea." She took her own seat, and beckoned with her hand to her father.
"Be near me, as if we were at home, papa." And again, as she intercepted his cup in passing, and would stir the sugar, and put in the cream herself, "I always did it for you at home; papa: nobody could do it as well, not even your own self." Throughout the meal she continued her attentions: rather absurd they were.

The sugar-tongs were too wide for one of her hands, and she had to use both in wielding them; the weight of the silver cream-ewer, the bread-and-butter plates, the very cup and saucer, tasked her insufficient strength and dexterity; but she would lift this, hand that, and luckily contrived through it all to break nothing.

Candidly speaking, I thought her a little busy-body; but her father, blind like other parents, seemed perfectly content to let her wait on him, and even wonderfully soothed by her offices.
"She is my comfort!" he could not help saying to Mrs.Bretton.

That lady had her own "comfort" and nonpareil on a much larger scale, and, for the moment, absent; so she sympathised with his foible.
This second "comfort" came on the stage in the course of the evening.