He looked at her keenly to see if she were perfectly sincere. Her face had the expression of a child, and the thought flashed across him, "If she is so watched and guarded, how vain are my attempts!"
But he only said with a shrug, "It would be a pity to dissipate your happy superstition, Miss Walton, but after what I have seen and experienced in the world it would seem more generally true that the mother forgot her charge, left the window, and the child was run over by the butcher's cart."
"Do you think it vain confidence," said Annie, earnestly, "when I say that you could not dissipate what you term my 'superstition,' any more than you could argue me out of my belief in my good old father's love?"
CHAPTER XIII
INTERPRETING CHESTNUT BURRS
The conversation had taken a turn that Gregory wished to avoid, so he said: "Miss Walton, you regard me as wretched authority on theology, and therefore my opinions will go for nothing. Suppose we join the children on the hill, for I am most anxious to commence the search for the clew to your favor. Give me your hand, that as your attendant I may at least appear to assist you in climbing, though I suppose you justly think you could help me more than I can you."
"And if I can, why should I not?" asked Annie, kindly.
"Indeed, Miss Walton, I would crawl up first. But thanks to your reviving influences, I am not so far gone as that."
"Then you would not permit a woman to reach out a helping hand to you?
Talk not against Turks and Arabs. How do Christian men regard us?"
"But you look upon me as a 'heathen.'"