'That's the place. It has done us all good—only strains are endless worries, and he can't take as much exercise as usual. He has thought so much of your coming too—he will be much better now it is over. Little Gerald! little Gerald, our dear little boy!' said she, trying to take the small thin hand that lay on the little black knee, and to look beneath the broad grass hat.
'Take off your hat, my man,' said Ferdinand; 'let your aunt see your face.'
The child obeyed, and sat leaning against his friend, holding his hat in both hands, and gazing full at Geraldine, out of a pair of eyes, which, after what she had heard, rather disappointed her by not being of the family blue, but soft liquid brown; but the skin was delicately fair, and the features of the true Underwood cast, strangely startling her by recalling Theodore, not the mindless Tedo of daily life, but such as he had lain in the Oratory only with those great mournful eyes and a soul intensely looking out of them. The hair too was very light, of the same silkworm fineness as Theodore's, and falling in the selfsame masses of glossy waves. Ferdinand parted these aside caressingly, and showed a curved red scar that made her shudder and ask 'Is it well?'
'Quite. It did not go deep, and even the other is entirely healed now,' said Ferdinand, 'though its effects are more lasting. However, he found his legs on board ship.'
'Are you tired, my dear?' she asked, feeling as if another moment of the gaze of the big sad eyes would make her cry.
'I'm used up,' he said, piteously, but though the phrase was Yankee, the weary tone was English, and gentlemanlike.
'Poor dear little man! We shall be at home presently, and then you shall rest, and have tea.'
A smile broke out on the little face—a smile approving him truly as Edgar's son, as, glancing up through those long black eye-lashes, he asked, 'Are you Chérie?'—(not Cherry, but Edgar's own exclusive title for her).
'Chérie! To be sure I am, my own dear, dear little boy,' and the tears started while she smiled.
'Then will you tell me the rest of the stories?'