She responded with a suddenness that startled him.
“Why—where am I? Oh! I know. Did I go to sleep, Uncle Joe?”
“I should judge that you did. Would you like to go to bed?”
“If you please, uncle.”
He smiled faintly at the odd situation in which he found himself, playing nurse to a little girl. A boy would have been less disconcerting, for he had been a boy himself, once, and remembered his childhood. But he had never been a little girl, had never lived in a house with a little girl, and didn’t know how little girls expected to be treated. He volunteered one question:
“If somebody takes you to your room, could you—could you do the rest for yourself, Josephine?”
“Why, course. I began when I was eight years old. That was my last birthday that ever was. Big Bridget was not to wait on me any more after that, mamma said. But she did. She loved it. Mamma, even, loved it, too. And nobody need go upstairs with me. I know the way. I remember it all. If— May I say my prayers by you, Uncle Joe? Mamma”—
One glance about the strange room, one thought of the absent mother, and the little girl’s lip quivered. Then came a second thought, and she remembered her promise. She was never to cry again, if she could help it. By winking very fast and thinking about other things than mamma and home she would be able to help it.
Before he touched her shoulder to wake her, Mr. Smith had rung for Peter, who now stood waiting orders in the parting of the portière, and beheld a sight such as he had never dreamed to see in that great, lonely house: Josephine kneeling reverently beside his master’s knee, saying aloud the Lord’s Prayer and the familiar “Now I lay me.”
Then she rose, flung her arms about the gentleman’s neck, saw the moisture in his eyes, and asked in surprise: