“Yes, Bob,” answered Steenie, gently, patting the great head around which she clung for support. “But s’pose you put me down. I’m heavy. I’m such a big girl, now.”
“No, you ain’t. Hold you forever, if you’ll stay.”
“Stay? stay where?” asked somebody.
“Tell ’em,” again commanded the Kentuckian; and waving her hand, she hushed them by this gesture to hear her words.
Yet, somehow, the words wouldn’t come. For the second time that day the self-control of the child failed to respond to her needs. Her eyes roamed from face to face of those gathered about her, and there was not one on which she did not read an answering love for the great love she bore to it. Rough faces, most of them. Sun blackened,—sin blackened too, perhaps; but gentle, every one, toward her. Odd comrades for a little girl, and she a descendant of “one of the first families in Old Knollsboro;” still the only comrades she had ever known, and therefore she craved no other.
Twice she tried to speak, and felt a queer lump in her throat that choked her; and at last she dropped her face upon Bob’s rough mane, her sunny curls mingling with it to hide the tears which hurt her pride to show.
An ominous growl ran round the assembly, and the sound was the tonic she needed. “Hmm! who’s a makin’ ther Little Un cry?”
“Nobody, boys! dear, dear boys! Not anybody at all! I’m not crying now; see?” Proudly her head was tossed back, and a determined smile came to the still quivering lips, even while the tears glistened on the long lashes. “You see, it’s this way. I didn’t know it till this very day that ever was, or I’d have told you. ’Cause I’ve always been square, haven’t I?”
“You bet! Square’s a brick!”
“But all the time my father’s been getting blinder an’ blinder, an’ I didn’t even s’pect anything ’bout it. I thought he wore goggley things ’cause he liked ’em; but he didn’t: it was ’cause he had to. And now, if he don’t go away quick, he can’t get his poor eyes fixed up at all. So he is. He’s going ’way, ’way off,—three thousand miles, my father says, to a big city called New York, where a lot of doctors live who don’t do anything but mend eyes. My grandmother lives in a little town close to New York, and we’re going to her house to stay; and—and—that’s all. I have to do it, you see. I’m sorry, ’cause I love you all; but he’s my father, and I have to love him the biggest, the best. And I hope you don’t mind.”