“You? What are you thinking of, child?” said Orion. She did not heed his remonstrance, but went on eagerly, quite sure of her own meaning:
“He shall be told everything, everything! Ought he to know what I heard about your share in the flight of the sisters?”
“No, no; on no account!” cried Nilus and his master both at once; and Mary understood that her proposition was accepted. She clapped her hands, and exclaimed full of enterprise and with glowing cheeks:
“The messenger shall start to-morrow; rely on me. I can do it as well as the greatest. And now tell me exactly the road he is to take. To make sure, write the names of the stages on my little tablet.—But wait, I must rub it smooth.”
“What is this on the wax?” asked Orion. “A large heart with squares all over it.—And that means?”
“Oh! mere nonsense,” said the child somewhat abashed. “It was only to show how my heart was divided among the persons I love. A whole half of it belongs to Paula, this quarter is yours; but there, there, there,” and at each word she prodded the wax with the stylus, “that is where I had kept a little corner for old Horapollo. He had better not come in my way again!”
Her nimble fingers smoothed the wax, and over the effaced heart—a child’s whim—Orion wrote things on which the lives of two human beings depended. He did so with sincere confidence in his little ally’s adroitness and fidelity. Early next morning she was to receive a letter to be conveyed to Amru by the messengers.
“But a rapid journey costs money, and Amru always chooses the road by the mountains and Berenice,” observed the treasurer. “If we put together our last gold pieces they will hardly suffice.”
“Keep them, you will want them here,” said the little girl. “And yet—there are my pearls, to be sure, and my mother’s jewels—at the same time....”
“You ought never to part from such things, you heart of gold!” cried Orion.