Thus assaulted, the door of the caravan was opened from within, and Mr. Love pushed his way into the interior. A strange enough sight met him when once inside.
The individual apostrophized as “Old Flick” closed and bolted the door with extraordinary precaution, as soon as his master had entered, and then turned and hovered nervously before him, while Mr. Love sank down on the only chair in the place. The caravan was bare of all furniture except a rough cooking-stove and a three-legged deal table. But it was at neither of these objects that Job Love stared, as he tilted back his chair and waved impatiently aside the deprecatory old man.
Stretched on a ragged horse-blanket upon the floor lay a sleeping child. Clothed in little else than a linen bodice and a short flannel petticoat, she turned restlessly in her slumber under Mr. Love’s scrutiny, and crossing one bare leg over the other, flung out a long white arm, while her dark curls, disturbed by her movement, fell over her face and hid it from view.
“Ah!” remarked Mr. Love. “Quieter now, I see. She must dance today, Flick, and no mistake about it! You must take her out in the fields this morning, like you did that other one. I can’t have no more rampaging and such-like, in my decent circus. But she must dance, there’s no getting over that,—she must dance, Old Flick! ’Twas your own blighting notion to take her on, remember; and I can’t have no do-nothing foreigners hanging around, specially now August be come.
“What did she say her nonsense-name was? Lores,—Dolores? Whoever heard tell of such a name as that?”
The sound of his voice seemed to reach the child even in her sleep; for flinging her arms over her head, and turning on her back, she uttered a low indistinguishable murmur. Her eyes, however, remained closed, the dark curves of her long eye-lashes contrasting with the scarlet of her mouth and the ivory pallor of her skin.
Even Job Love—though not precisely an æsthete—was struck by the girl’s beauty.
“She’ll make a fine dancer, Flick, a fine dancer! How old dost think she be? ’Bout twelve, or may-be more, I reckon.
“’Tis pity she won’t speak no Christian word. ’Tis wonderful, how these foreign childer do hold so obstinate by their darned fancy-tongue!
“We must trim her out in them spangle-gauzes of Skipsy Jane. She were the sort of girl to make the boys holler. But this one’ll do well enough, I reckon, if so be she goes smilin’ and chaffin’ upon the boards.