“Hush! I have not fully decided.”
She endeavored to elude observation by standing close to the body of a large pine, but Dr. Grey caught a glimpse of her 43 fluttering dress, and came forward rapidly, carrying in his arms one young lamb and driving another before him.
“Salome, will you be so good as to assist me in shepherding this obstinate little waif? It has been running hither and thither for nearly half an hour, taking every direction but the right one. If you will either walk on and lower the bars for me or drive this lamb while I go forward, you will greatly oblige me. Pardon me,—you look distressed. Something painful has occurred, I fear.”
The girl’s usually firm mouth trembled as she laid her hand on the torn straw hat that shaded Stanley’s features, and answered, hurriedly,—
“Yes. We have both stumbled upon stray lambs; but mine, unfortunately, happens to prove my youngest brother, and, since I am neither Reuben nor Judah, I could not leave him in the woods to perish. Stanley, run on and pull down the bars yonder, where you see the sheep looking through the fence.”
“How old is he?”
“About eight years, I believe, but he is small for his age.”
“He does not in the least resemble you.”
“No; pitiable little wretch, he looks like nothing but destitution! When a poor man dies, leaving a houseful of beggarly orphans, the State ought to require the undertaker who buries him to shoot or hang the whole brood, and lay them all in the Potter’s Field out of the world’s way.”
“Such words and sentiments are strangely at variance with the affectionate gentleness and resignation which best become womanly lips, and I pity the keen suffering that wrings them from yours. He who ‘setteth the solitary in families’ never yet failed in loving guardianship of trusting orphanage, and certainly you have no cause to upbraid fate, or impiously murmur against the decrees of your God.”