CHAPTER X
ZEB AND A TEA PARTY.
The door swung slowly open and a small, miserably thin child stood narrowly inspecting them through black, curly wisps of hair that hung down over her forehead and made her look like a terrier. She had on a ragged, dirty frock, and a dingy plaid shawl covered her shoulders.
“I am glad to see you, dear child,” said Stargarde, going to meet her and taking her warmly by the hand. “Come into the bedroom and take off your things.”
The child picked off the back of her black head a tiny boy’s cap that lay there like an ugly patch, and plucking impatiently at her shawl to draw it from her shoulders, flashed Stargarde an adoring glance and followed her into an inner room.
“Will you wash your face, dear?” said Stargarde, pouring some water from a ewer to a little basin that she placed on a chair. “Here is a clean towel and some of the nicest soap. Just smell it. Somebody sent it to me from Paris.”
The girl tossed back her hair from her dirty face and dabbled her hands in the water. “Who’s that cove out there?” she said with an ugly scowl and jerking her head in the direction of the other room.
“A friend of mine, Dr. Camperdown. He is a nice man, Zeb. I hope you will like him.”
“Them dirty swells, I hate ’em,” returned the child.
Stargarde was silent. To try at the outset to reform the vocabulary of a child of the gutter was, she knew, a mistake. The girl had been brought up in an evil atmosphere, and her little perverted mind was crammed with bitter prejudices against all who were better off in regard to this world’s goods than she was herself. Stargarde watched pityingly the sullen face bending over the basin.
“He wants yer,” said the child suddenly, and with an acute spasm of jealousy contracting her brows. “I seed it in him. He’ll take yer away from the Pav.”