On the main she might have been more closely looked after; but here she was so safe that not a thought was given to her safety.
So, every day, when it did not rain, little Gloria went down to the landing to see her playmate and read to him while he mended old nets and seines, or made new ones.
At first she was only “playing school,” but later on she understood her work and grew interested in the progress of her pupil; and thus her play rose into “a labor of love.”
Together they went through the First Book in Geography, and the First Book in History, and the Primary Grammar.
And in this way the child not only advanced her pupil playmate, but refreshed her own memory in those studies, which had been too much neglected since her arrival at the promontory.
A pure, sweet, and faithful affection grew up between the two children, such as we have sometimes seen between two little girls or two little boys; only because neither Gloria nor David had any other playmate to divide their attention, their innocent affection was all the stronger, deeper, and more devoted in its exclusiveness.
Very often, too, the fisher-boy brought an invitation from his grandmother to the little lady to spend a day on the sandhill which the old dame called her home. It was always accepted, and always Gloria had “a happy, happy day.”
She learned of the old cottager to net, to knit, to sew, to piece patchwork quilts out of scraps of bright calico and white linen, and to plait doormats out of strips of brilliant cloth or flannel—arts not likely to be of much use to the West Indian heiress—but she liked to learn them, notwithstanding.
“Wouldn’t I make a right good little cottage girl, after all, Granny Lindsay?” she once asked her old friend, in her childish love of approbation.
“’Ee would, my darling,” said the old dame, tenderly. “’Ee would make a helpful, loving little lass by the cottage fire, or a gracious benign princess in a palace. The world’s breath of sunshine is for ’ee, my flower, from the cottage to the palace.”