She put Baby on the floor at her feet and pulled off her bonnet. And her dark curly hair fell loosely around her odd white face.
"Now—your name!" shouted the old captain, as if he were calling to a sailor high up a mast.
"Elizabeth Bruce," faltered the girl, for her reason showed her in a second how John Brown would give it if she did not.
A certain gleam that had been in the old man's eyes went away and his brow grew black as thunder. Betty instinctively picked up the baby again and gathered up the train of her dress.
"Ah!" said the old man, breathing hard.
Then suddenly a light dawned on Betty and she saw things as this old man would see them, which was the very way of all others that he must not do.
She repeated swiftly to herself her old charm against fear—"No Bruce is afraid. I can only die once. He won't eat me."
"It's all my fault," she said, and her brown eyes looked into his brown ones. "Cyril and I got tried of being poor, and I—I thought it would be a good plan if you adopted Cyril—and—and I came to frighten you."
"I thought you were old, and—and—might be sorry now, and I thought a bit of a fright—I thought if a ghost——"