She held out her arms, smiling, and with a glow upon her face, “Come!”
The boy glanced upward to her face. His eyes filled with light; his lips parted, and eying her with the shy look which we meet in a frightened rabbit, he held up his arms, laughing for the first time in weeks.
The lady snatched him eagerly to her bosom. In an instant his arms wreathed themselves lovingly around her neck, and his cheek lay against hers.
“Strange, isn’t it, that he should take to me so suddenly?” she said, pressing the pretty face closer to hers, and giving it a sidelong kiss. “Isn’t he pretty?”
“Yes, and no?” answered the husband, laughing. “He would be a little heathen if he did not take to you; and he is beautiful as one of Raphael’s cherubs.”
“And so loving,” rejoined the wife, with a pleading glance. “What a pity to leave him here!”
The husband looked gravely from the lady to the child. In his heart he thought her like one of Raphael’s Madonnas, only no painted child was ever so lovingly beautiful as the orphan she held.
“Couldn’t we?” pleaded the lady, softly with her lips, most eloquently with her eyes.
“It is a serious business,” answered the husband, still gravely, and with a sort of sadness.
“But we have none of our own, and our home is so large?” The cloud deepened on her husband’s face.