“No, Granny Jones lived with me. But she’s cross too. Oh!” she suddenly added, with passionate earnestness, “if mother hadn’t died.”
Kate was silent. The child was then an orphan. She said kindly, after a moment.
“You remember your mother?”
“Oh! yes. She was so beautiful,” and the tears glistened in the child’s eyes. “Not beautiful like you, not proud looking and grand, but so sweet and pretty. She never scolded me in all her life, never, never.” And the child burst into low, half-stifled sobs, which, in her effort to suppress them, shook her little frame.
Kate was again silent; tears sympathetically dimmed her eyes. The child saw it, and hushing her sobs, said,
“But Granny Jones was sent away, when uncle came back.”
“And when he’s away, you’re alone?” The child nodded.
“All alone, except with Lion,” she said, glancing at the bloodhound. “He’s such a good fellow,” she added, her eyes brightening. “We play together, when we’ve time! Don’t we, Lion?” and she caressed him.
Kate sighed to think of this lovely child, brought up by an outlaw, yet retaining so much of heaven’s purity, living here in the forest with no companion but this ferocious dog. She longed to question the little outcast respecting her mother, about whom there seemed some strange mystery. But she refrained out of respect to the girl, who evidently suffered at allusions to her parent’s name.
“Why won’t you go with me?” said Kate, winningly. “Help me to get away from this place, and I’ll take you home with me, where you shall have everything you like, and be my little sister.”