“Maybe I am. I don’t remember bowing down to anything, except when I say my prayers.”
“Your prayers! Then you can’t be a real heathen. Heathens don’t say prayers, not our kind. Hmm. What lovely eyes you’ve got and how pretty you are! All the women never saw such wonderful hair as yours, nor the men either. I heard them say so. If I had a sister, I’d like her to look just like you. But it’s wicked to be vain.”
“What do you mean, you funny boy?”
“I’m not funny. I’m serious. My mother—my mother said—my mother—Oh! I want her! I want her!”
Religion, superiority, priggishness, all flew to the winds as his real and fresh grief overcame him; and it was a heart-broken lad that hurled himself against the shoulder of this sympathetic-looking girl who, though so much taller, was not so very much older than he.
The Sun Maid’s own heart echoed the cry with a keen pain, and she received the orphan’s outburst with exceeding tenderness. Now, whatever One, the eldest, did the other young numerals all imitated, so that each was soon weeping copiously. Yet, from very excess of energy, their grief soon exhausted itself and they regarded each other with some curiosity. Then Three began to smile, in a shamefaced sort of way, not knowing how far his recovery of composure would be approved by sterner One.
After a habit familiar to him the latter opened his lips to reprove but, fortunately, refrained, as he discovered a tall, stoop-shouldered man crossing the parade-ground.
This gentleman seemed oddly out of place amid that company of immigrants and soldiers. Student and bookworm was written all over his fine, intellectual countenance, and his eyes had that absent expression that had made the commandant’s wife call him a “dreamer.”
His bearing impressed the Sun Maid with reverent awe; a feeling apparently not shared by his sons. For Three ran to him and shook him violently, to secure attention, as he eagerly exclaimed: