“Drawin’?”
“Aye, it was mam’s idea.”
Janny’s eyes grew large.
“Ariel, do ye—do ye—think ye could draw me a—a cat?”
Ariel took one look at Janny and burst into laughter; shop, poetry, everything was forgotten in his amusement at her childlike eagerness. Suddenly he stopped, for Janny’s face was quivering. Aye, he had forgotten, too, that this was no peasant-woman; his laughter seemed brutal.
“Janny, little lamb,” he said softly, drawing her head to him, “I could, dear, I’ll sketch all the cats ye want.”
Janny sighed comfortably, her head still upon his shoulder, the weariness easing away from her heart. She could do it now; it would make the greatest difference; Betto Griffiths and others should see that she was something more than a bit of porcelain in Ariel’s home, that she could do something more than merely oversee house-cleaning. Besides, it really was something more,—it was having an idea of her own, and that until Ariel rescued her she had never been allowed to have. She reached up and patted his face; even her gestures were incomprehensibly childlike. What she lacked in the passion of a woman she seemed to make up in the perfect trust of a child. Ariel, selfish with the selfishness of a man who has lived by himself and who had lived much in his own mind, thought now with a pang how lonely Janny must have been ever since she came to him; the appeal of her confidence touched the best that was in him, the protection that was his to give her, and some potential sense of fatherhood. Aye, he knew how tired she was after the life that lay behind her, and he gathered her into his arms, holding her there quietly while he talked.
“What shall it be, Janny? A star, an anchor, a bit of rope, an’ a cat, did ye say, dear?”
“Aye, a star, Ariel, please. I don’t think I want the anchor. The bit of rope would be nice, dear. An’ I’d like the cat.”