“Good morning, little boy.”
“Tiss dood mornin’, Met.”
The girl caught him up in her arms and kissed him enthusiastically.
To her dark and gloomy life he had come like some beautiful, brilliant bird of Heaven, and she prized him and delighted in him. It was something of the same sort of natural passion that a child feels for its first wonderful wax doll, or its first beautiful live pet, only it was much more intense, inasmuch as this was a living, loving talking doll—a beautiful, intelligent human pet.
And so she kissed him, and hugged him, and shook him, and danced him, and prattled to him, and called him all the sweet names that, on such cases, spring spontaneously to the lips of girls and women.
And Lenny, in his gracious, genial nature, gave kiss for kiss, and caress for caress.
I think if poor Drusilla, waking in her agony of bereavement, that same morning, could have seen, as in a magic glass, these two friends—the girl and the baby,—she would have been contented,—no, not that, but she would have felt comforted.
“Lenny love Met,” said the child, patting her cheeks.
“And ‘Met’ loves Lenny dearly, dearly, dearly! and nobody shall hurt him—they shall kill ‘Met’ first!”
Now, as “hurt” and “kill” were words that had never been introduced into this cherished baby’s vocabulary, he did not understand and did not know how to reply; but he felt that love was meant throughout, and he knew how to answer that. So he patted Meg’s cheeks and kissed her lips.