Daniel Calthorp drew his darling closer to his side; and though he smiled brightly enough, his own heart echoed the disappointed words. He had known from the moment when his mother’s voice had fallen on his now super-sensitive ear that his coming had brought her no pleasure, and that she had been too truthful to put into her welcome a warmth which she did not feel.
“Then we must be so patient and kind to her, sweetheart, that she can’t help being glad, after awhile. I depend upon you, my Blue Eyes, to work a miracle.”
So they entered the Madam’s presence once more, and together; and though she saw something pathetic in the grouping of that helpless pair, the disturbance and annoyance which their coming was to her calm, self-sufficient life far outweighed her pity.
CHAPTER VI.
STEENIE READING.
My-soul-I-declare! you here? Don’t ye know Madam don’t ’low nobody to tetch her books?” almost shouted Resolved Tubbs, entering the library on the morning following “Mr. Daniel’s” arrival, and, early as the hour was, finding the place already occupied by Steenie. Sprawling flat upon the hearth rug, and supporting herself upon her elbows, she turned the leaves of a richly illustrated folio, while piles of other volumes were heaped about her, in careless disregard of injured bindings. She did not heed, because she did not hear, the reproof; for at that moment her childish soul was deep in the “Inferno,” following the poet’s dark imagings by the aid of Doré’s darker pencillings. She had had the handling of few books in her short life, but she “took to them” as naturally as did her stately grandmother, whose quiet existence for many years had been among them almost wholly.
“Don’t you hear, sissy? You mustn’t tetch ’em, I tell ye! Git up, quick! I—I dunno what on airth she’d say if she was ter come in this minute!”
“What, sir?” asked Steenie, absently, lifting a face white with horror, “is it true?”
“True as the gospel; you’d better look out!”