The child, a handsome little fellow of some sixteen months, toddled across to his mother, waving his hands as he went, and laughing, while his large hazel eyes glowed with pleasure. His mother caught him, pushed the silken brown hair back from his forehead, and laid his cheek against hers.
“Ah!” she said, “Tha’s got a funny Dad, tha’ has, not like another man, no, my duckie. ’E’s got no ’art ter care for nobody, ’e ’asna, ma pigeon—no,—lives like a stranger to his own flesh an’ blood.”
The girl with the wounded cheek had found comfort in Leslie. She was seated on his knee, looking at him with solemn blue eyes, her solemnity increased by the quaint round head, whose black hair was cut short.
“’S my chalk, yes it is, ’n our Sam says as it’s ’issen, an’ ’e ta’es it and marks it all gone, so I wouldna gie ’t ’im,”—she clutched in her fat little hand a piece of red chalk. “My Dad gen it me, ter mark my dolly’s face red, what’s on’y wood—I’ll show yer.”
She wriggled down, and holding up her trailing gown with one hand, trotted to a corner piled with a child’s rubbish, and hauled out a hideous carven caricature of a woman, and brought it to Leslie. The face of the object was streaked with red.
“’Ere sh’ is, my dolly, what my Dad make me—’er name’s Lady Mima.”
“Is it?” said Lettie, “and are these her cheeks? She’s not pretty, is she?”
“Um—sh’ is. My Dad says sh’ is—like a lady.”
“And he gave you her rouge, did he?”
“Rouge!” she nodded.