And they all turned their eyes on a flying bundle of curls, rosy cheeks, fat legs and clean pinafore, that came speeding towards old Josey, with another young feminine creature scampering after it crying:
"Ipsie! Hip-po-ly-ta! Baby! Come back to your dinner!"
But Hippolyta was a person evidently accustomed to have her own way, and she ran straight up to Josey Letherbarrow as though he were the one choice hero picked out of a world.
"Zozey!" she screamed, stretching out a pair of short, mottled arms;
"My own bootiful Zozey-posey! Tum and pick fowers!"
With an ecstatic shriek at nothing in particular, she caught the edge of the old man's smock.
"My Zozey," she said purringly, "'Oo vezy old, but I loves 'oo!"
A smile and then a laugh went the round of the group. They were all accustomed to Ipsie's enthusiasms. Josey Letherbarrow paused a minute to allow his small admirer to take firm hold of his garments, and patted her little head with his brown wrinkled hand.
"We'se goin' sweetheartin', ain't we, Ipsie," he said gently, the beautiful smile that made his venerable face so fine and lovable, again lighting up his sunken eyes. "Come along, little lass! Come along!"
"She ain't finished her dinner!" breathlessly proclaimed a long- legged girl of about ten, who had run after the child, being one of her numerous sisters; "Mother said she was to come back straight."
"I s'ant go back!" declared Ipsie defiantly; "Zozey and me's sweetheartin'!"