“Oh, do eat it,” cried Bess. “You never tasted anything like it! O mister, please tell her to. She’s alwers keepin’ things for me.”
“There will be plenty for you to take home. I must find you some flowers too. And this evening I am going to start on a journey—to be away several weeks. I’m sorry to lose sight of you, and I want to know how to find Barker’s Court. When I come back—would your mother mind your posing for me, do you think?”
“Posing?” Dil looked frightened.
“Just what you did this afternoon. Being put in a picture.”
It had suddenly come into his mind that he could lighten Dil’s burthen that way. He wanted to keep track of them.
“And what do you do with the pictures?”
“Sell them”—and he smiled.
“You couldn’t sell me; I’m not pritty enough,” she said, with the utter absence of all personal vanity, and a latent sense of amusement.
“When I come back we will talk about it. And I will bring you the book. You will learn more than I can tell you. I used to read it when I was a boy. And then we will talk about—going to heaven.”
He colored a little, and his heart beat with a new and unwonted emotion.