And Rufus watching the little thin white face flush pink with excitement, wondered if Rebecca was as chary with her food as with her smiles.
"This is my dinner," he said, "and I have a hearty appetite, so you must follow my example."
"But I have had my dinner," said the child, "I always have it at school, and I never have anything but bread and butter and milk and water for tea. Sometimes Becca lets me make toast, but she says it takes too much butter for me to have often."
Tea passed off delightfully; afterward Greta was shown photographs and pictures, and then the two drifted off into talk, until under the spell of the child's sympathetic eyes, Rufus found himself telling her his history.
"Once there were two boys who lost their father when quite young; and their mother brought them up with the longing desire in her heart, that they might prove great men, and bring honor and glory to their name."
"What does that mean?" asked Greta, with interest.
"Do something grand or noble to make their mother proud of them, and win themselves fame in the world. The eldest one she meant to be a clergyman, so she sent him to Oxford, and thought of the time when she might see him made a bishop. The younger one went into the army, and he got on very fairly well, for he was sent out to India and distinguished himself when only a corporal. But the eldest son, alas! turned out a failure. He wasn't cut out for a clergyman: he hated the idea of it, and at last left college and told his mother it was waste of money to keep him there. She was bitterly disappointed and very angry—justly or unjustly we will not say. She told him that if he would not take up the profession which was open to him, he must not expect her to keep him at home in idleness, and she said she would have nothing more to do with him if he refused to carry out her wishes. So one day when they were talking about it, he told her he would go away. And he packed up his portmanteau, and left his home, and after a great struggle to keep himself alive on what used barely to clothe him, he found an opening in a little country bank, and when he got work he began to get happy again. It was only in the evenings he sometimes had sad thoughts about his mother; and so he was glad when one day fortune threw across his path a little white-faced sprite. He thought he would ask her to tea sometimes to cheer him up, and one night she came."
"What was she like?" asked Greta, eagerly. "How was she dressed?"
"She had a little tiny face with two big eyes, which always seemed looking away into the future with big thoughts behind them. I think she was dressed in a white pinafore, and a blue sash, and she had a blue bow amongst her curls. She looked sometimes as wise as Solomon, and sometimes like a doll or baby. She had a trick of nursing her chin in her hands, and of giving an important little shake to her head as she spoke."
"She was dressed just like me," observed Greta, thoughtfully; then she added: