Then she turned and went back. 354
“Come, Toddles,” she said; “you come with ’Tana.”
A faint flush was tingeing the east, and over the water-courses a silvery mist was spread. She looked out from the window and then up the mountain.
“Let us go out—up on the bluff,” she suggested. “I have been shut up in houses so long! I want to feel that the trees are close to me again.”
He assented in silence and the child, having appeased its hunger, was disposed to be more gracious, and the little hands were reached to him while she said:
“Up.”
He lifted her to his shoulder, where she laughed down in high glee at the girl who walked beside in silence. It was so much easier to plan, while far away from him, what she would say, than to say it.
But he himself broke the silence.
“You call her Toddles,” he remarked. “It is not a pretty name for so pretty a child. Has she no other one?”
They had reached the bluff above the camp that was almost a town now. She sat down on a log and wished she could keep from trembling so.