“Wasn’t lookin’ fer ye ’t all! Oh, oh! Be ye born ter murder me outright, er be ye not? Um—m! That’s what I’d like ter know.”
“Murder you? Why, you must be funny! How, why should a little girl murder anybody?”
“My-soul-I-declare! But you seem boun’ ter! An’ in the name o’ common sense, what be ye doin’ out here with no clothes on ter speak of? Where’s yer bunnit er yer shawl?”
Shawl! Steenie had never thought of it from the moment when she took it off and laid it on the fence. The fence! What fence? Where? All up and down those two long rows of palings which faded into an indistinct line and seemed to melt together in the distance, the child’s eyes searched critically. But there was nothing in sight to suggest the shawl, which had been only loaned by Madam Calthorp, and Steenie’s fear took a new direction. What if it were lost?—as she had been, and the Maltese cat.
She had been trained to a very nice observance of “thine” and “mine;” and even at Santa Felisa, where she was so universally loved and indulged, she had never mislaid or used anything belonging to another without permission. How dreadful to begin now with something owned by that stern, beautiful grandmother whom she already loved so dearly, yet who seemed too “intelligy” to return such a simple sentiment!
“Which is my grandmother’s house, Mr. Resolved? Please, will you show me?—even if you weren’t sent after me.”
“Sent arter ye! Humph! Psst-t’ I’d like ter see myself bein’ sent arter younguns, at my time o’ life!”
“Where, please? Quick!”
For answer the old man pushed his spectacles into their legitimate place and looked at the questioner searchingly. “Well, I hate ter own it, but I s’pose I’ll have ter. I ’lowed ter Mary Jane fust off, ’t ye didn’t seem like common younguns; an’ then that fool kind o’ talk this mornin’; an’ now, a losin’ of yerself in a plain straight road like this. It’s a pity,—it’s a terr’ble pity.”
“Of course it is. But don’t you see? I did it just because it is so plain. I was never outside my grandmother’s house before, only when we came. And I was so tired I didn’t notice; an’ these rows and rows look just like a flock of sheep, each more the same than the other; and if you won’t tell me”—A fit of shivering cut short her remarks.