“May I?” she said, softly.
“To be sure,” he answered.
“It’s very kind of you,” she whispered, “and I like it. I go out so little, and yet I long to; and if I don’t stay here long, I shall have seen so little of the world.”
“Netta, my child,” he exclaimed, “what are you saying?”
The girl’s other hand was laid upon his arm, as they stood beneath a shady tree, and she looked up at him in a dreamy way.
“I think sometimes,” she said, slowly, “that I shall not be here long. It’s my cough, I suppose. It’s so pleasant to feel, though, that people—some one cares for me; only it makes me feel that I shall not want to go.”
“Come, come, this is nonsense,” he said, cheerily. “Why, you’re not an invalid.”
“I should be, I think, if we were rich,” she said, sadly. “But let’s go on along by that high sand bank, where the flowers are growing; and here is a wood all deep shades of green.”
“But you will be tired?”
“No, no; you said I might rest on you. I should not be weak if I could live out here, and dear mamma were not compelled to work. Poor mamma!”