Jerome turned on her fiercely. “Don't want your old gingerbread,” he cried. “Ain't hungry—have all I want to home.”
The little Lucina jumped, and her blue eyes filled with tears. She turned away without a word, and ran falteringly, as if she could not see for tears, across the field; and there was a white lamb trotting after her. It had appeared from somewhere in the fields, and Jerome had not noticed it. He remembered hearing that Lucina Merritt had a cosset lamb that followed her everywhere. “Has everything,” he muttered—“lambs an' everything. Don't want your old gingerbread.”
Suddenly he sprang up and began feeling in his pocket; then he ran like a deer after the little girl. She rolled her frightened, tearful blue eyes over her shoulder at him, and began to run too, and the cosset lamb cantered faster at her heels; but Jerome soon gained on them.
“Stop, can't ye?” he sang out. “Ain't goin' to hurt ye. What ye 'fraid of?” He laid his hand on her green-shawled shoulders, and she stood panting, her little face looking up at him, half reassured, half terrified, from her blue silk hood-frills and her curls.
“Like sas'fras?” inquired Jerome, with a lordly air. An emperor about to bestow a largess upon a slave could have had no more of the very grandeur of beneficence in his mien.
Lucina nodded meekly.
Jerome drew out a great handful of strange articles from his pocket, and they might, from his manner of handling them, have been gold pieces and jewels. There were old buttons, a bit of chalk, and a stub of slate-pencil. There were a horse-chestnut and some grains of parched sweet-corn and a dried apple-core. There were other things which age and long bondage in the pocket had brought to such passes that one could scarcely determine their identities. From all this Jerome selected one undoubted treasure—a great jagged cut of sassafras root. It had been nicely scraped, too, and looked white and clean.
“Here,” said Jerome.
“Don't you want it?” asked Lucina, shyly.
“No—had a great piece twice as big as that yesterday. Know where there's lots more in the cedar swamp. Here, take it.”