“Poor little thing; she probably hasn’t got a single one of them!” The Morning-Glory’s eyes were misty as she looked down upon the small braggart.
“Where are you going?” shrieked Jacob after her.
“To the moon!” she answered absently, looking steadily ahead, searching the feathery edges of the wide bathing-pool in which some barelegged children were paddling for little ’Becca in the out-at-toe shoes and coarse grey frock, in order to transform her into something like a stout fairy, before the folk-dancing should begin.
“To de—moon? Take me!” screamed Jacob, all agog for any excursion in such good company.
Was it from the moon—the now invisible Thunder Moon of July—or from the edge of some far planet of gloom that the sudden cry came, a cry with a note of menace in it, of sobbing horror, of fear, wiping out Jacob’s childish plea from the face of the sunshine?
A cry in the guttural accents, the broken English that attacked the girls’ ears everywhere on this playground!
A cry that mocked the fragrance of the pyramidal catalpa blossoms and blanched the rainbowed fountain at the heart of the bathing-pool until it frowned like a specter!
“’Becca!” gasped Jessica, flattening her soft parcel against her heaving breast. “’Becca!” She knew not why she said it.
CHAPTER VI
THE GREEN CROSS