“NOW I LAY ME.”
“Do you feel bad, Uncle Joe? Aren’t you happy, Uncle Joe? Can’t I help you, you dear, dear man?”
The “dear” man’s arms went round the little figure, and he drew it close to his lonely heart with a jealous wish that he might always keep it there. All at once he felt that he hated that other unknown, rightful uncle to whom this charming “parcel” belonged, and almost he wished that no such person might ever be found. Then he unclasped her clinging arms and—actually kissed her!
“You are helping me very greatly, Josephine. You are a dear child. Peter will see that your room is all right for the night. Tell him anything you need and he’ll get it for you. Good-night, little girl.”
“Good-night, Uncle Joe. Dear Uncle Joe. I think—I think you are just too sweet for words! I hope you’ll rest well. Good-night.”
She vanished through the curtains, looking back and kissing her finger-tips to him, and smiling trustingly upon him to the last. But the old man sat long looking after her before he turned again to his books, reflecting:
“Strange! Only a few hours of a child’s presence in this silent place, yet it seems transfigured. ‘An angel’s visit,’ maybe. To show me that, after all, I am something softer and more human than the crusty old bachelor I thought myself. What would her mother say, that absent, perfect ‘mamma,’ if she knew into what strange hands her darling had fallen? Of course, my first duty to-morrow is to hunt up this mislaid uncle of little Josephine’s and restore her to him. But—Well, it’s my duty, and of course I shall do it.”
The great bed in the guest room was big enough, Josephine thought, to have held mamma herself, and even big Bridget without crowding. It was far softer than her own little white cot in the San Diegan cottage, and plunged in its great depths the small traveller instantly fell asleep. She did not hear Peter come in and lower the light, and knew nothing more, indeed, till morning. Then she roused with a confused feeling, not quite realizing where she was or what had happened to her. For a few moments she lay still, expecting mamma’s or big Bridget’s face to appear beneath the silken curtains which draped the bed’s head; then she remembered everything, and that in a house without women she was bound to do all things for herself.
“But it’s dreadful dark everywhere. I guess I don’t like such thick curtains as Uncle Joe has. Mamma’s are thin white ones and it’s always sunshiny at home—’xcept when it isn’t. That’s only when the rains come, and that’s most always the nicest of all. Then we have a dear little fire in the grate, and mamma reads to me, and big Bridget bakes and cooks the best things. We write letters to papa, and mamma sings and plays, and—it’s just lovely! Never mind, Josephine. You’ll be back there soon’s papa gets well again, and Uncle Joe was sort of cryey round his eyes last night. Mamma said I was to be like his own little daughter to him and take care of him and never make him any trouble. So I will.”