“Next moonlight night that comes you will be in a very different looking place from this,” said he, pushing the lurid black ringlets back gently behind her ears, and noticing for the first time that sure index of “gentle blood” in human kind or horses—the small and elegantly formed ear.
“Where shall I be, godfather?”
“Never mind where! They have not bored your ears, Nettie!”
“No; I haven’t had my ears bored, but I saw a picture of an Indian with his nose bored.”
“Pooh—yet, after all, one is about as barbarous as the other, little Nettie. Nettie, my little girl, would you like to go home and live with me?”
“Go home and live ’long o’ you! Um-m-m-me—no! I had rather you’d come and live ’long o’ me.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I don’t want to leave granny; she wouldn’t have anybody to hug her up and keep her back warm at night.”
“But if we were to take granny with us, too?”
“Um-m—me. Could you take Hugh along, too?” asked the child, with the astute air of one making a shrewd bargain.