“Yes, Lali,” he assented—“yes, I understand you so far; but speak out.”
“I am not happy,” she said. “I never shall be happy. I have my child, and that is all I have. I cannot go back to the life in which I was born; I must go on as I am, a stranger among a strange people, pitied, suffered, cared for a little—and that is all.”
The nurse had drawn away a little distance with the child. The rest of the family were making their preparations inside the house. There was no one near to watch the singular little drama.
“You should not say that,” he added; “we all feel you to be one of us.”
“But all your world does not feel me to be one of them,” she rejoined.
“We shall see about that when you go up to town. You are a bit morbid, Lali. I don’t wonder at your feeling a little shy; but then you will simply carry things before you—now you take my word for it! For I know London pretty well.”
She held out her ungloved hands.
“Do they compare with the white hands of the ladies you know?” she said.
“They are about the finest hands I have ever seen,” he replied. “You can’t see yourself, sister of mine.”
“I do not care very much to see myself,” she said. “If I had not a maid I expect I should look very shiftless, for I don’t care to look in a mirror. My only mirror used to be a stream of water in summer,” she added, “and a corner of a looking-glass got from the Hudson’s Bay fort in the winter.”