"But you are mine, now, not his," said Trafford; with something like displeasure in his tone; "aren't you aware of it?"
Noll said not a word, but stood with his eyes turned away from his uncle's, and his cheeks crimsoning, while his breath came quick and fast.
"Will you obey me or not?" Trafford asked, sternly.
Noll turned around and met his uncle's eye. He began to plead. His awe of his uncle seemed to have vanished for the time, and Trafford was astonished at the boy's earnestness and vehemence. Two or three times he was about to put up his hand to command silence, but Noll redoubled his pleading, and he continued to listen. All the remembrances of the past dreary weeks—the want, the slow wasting, the flickering out of life, the dismal laying away of the poor body in the sand—came to Noll as vividly as the reality which he had witnessed, and made him pray for relief with an earnestness and entreaty which ordinarily were not his.
"Just think, Uncle Richard," said he, in conclusion, "papa would have gone to their aid long ago. He bade me do all the good I could, and you won't forbid me?—oh, I know you will not!—and won't you help me to do more,—won't you, Uncle Richard?"
Trafford gloomily pushed his nephew away.
"Go!" he said; "I do not care to see you any more this afternoon."
Hardly had the boy turned away, however, before the quick thought flashed into his mind that he had failed to ask him the question for which he had called him. He might even now be ill, and he was sending him away in anger!
"Noll!" exclaimed Trafford, "come back. Are you ill, my boy?"
"No, sir."