“Don’t you care for flowers?” Miss Deering seated herself beside the quiet child, and studied the face turned a little from her.
“Yes, I like thim so much,” glancing at them with a curiously absent air. Her manner was so formal and old-fashioned, and she roused a sense of elusiveness that puzzled the young lady.
“I think I must have seen you before. I can’t just remember—”
Dil raised her soft brown eyes, lustrous still with the tears of longing that were in them a moment ago. The short curved upper lip, the tumbled hair, the gravely wondering expression—how curiously familiar it seemed.
“I hope you are happy here?” she said gently.
“I like it better home,” Dil returned, but with no emphasis of ungraciousness. “I’m used to the boys, ’n’ they’re so good to me. But they wanted me to come an’ get well. I wasn’t reel sick only—Patsey don’t like me to look like a skiliton, he says. Everybody here’s so nice.”
“And who is Patsey—your brother?”
She seemed to study Virginia Deering in her turn. It was a proud face, yet soft and tender, friendly. It touched the reticent little soul.
“No; Owen’s my brother. There’s some more boys, an’ we keep house. Patsey is—Patsey’s alwers been good to me an’ Bess.”