She had not, of course, understood a word he said, except, indeed, her name, but the tone of his voice was interrogatory and seemed to expect an affirmative answer, which she gave in three languages, emphasizing ''ess' with a nod of her head, as if greatly pleased with herself.
"Bravo!" Harold shouted. "She can say yes. I taught her, and I shall have her talking English in a few days as well as I do, sha'n't I, Jerry?"
"Yah—'ess," was the reply.
Then Mr. St. Claire tried to question her further with regard to herself and her home, but no satisfactory result was reached beyond the fact that her mother was dead, that her name was Jerry, or Derree, as she called it, and that she had been on a ship with Mah-nee, who did so—and she imitated perfectly the motions and contortions of one who was deathly sea-sick.
"I suppose she means her mother by Mah-nee," Mr. St. Claire said; and when he asked her if it were not so, she answered "yah," and "'ess," as she did to everything, adopting finally the latter word altogether because she saw it pleased Harold.
No matter what was the question put to her, her reply was "'ess," which she repeated quickly, in a lisping tone, with a prolonged sound on the "s."
When at last Mr. St. Claire took his leave, it was with a strange feeling of interest for the child, whose antecedents must always be shrouded in mystery, and whose future he could not predict.
It seemed impossible for Mrs. Crawford to keep her, poor as she was, and as he had no idea that the Tracys would take her, there was no alternative but the poor-house, unless he took her himself and brought her up with his own little five-year-old Nina. He would wait until after the funeral and see, he decided, as he went back to his home at Brier Hill, where his children, Dick and Nina, were eager to hear all he had to tell them of the little girl whose mother had been frozen to death.
The next morning the sleigh from Tracy Park stopped before the cottage door, and Frank, who had been to meet the coroner, alighted from it. He was pale and haggard as he entered the room where Jerry was playing on the floor with Harold's Maltese kitten. As he came in she looked up at him, and, lifting her hand, swept the hair back from her forehead just as she had done the day before when Mr. St. Claire was there. The motion had struck the latter as something familiar, though he could not define it; but Frank did, and his knees shook so he could hardly stand as he talked with Mrs. Crawford and told her he had come for the child, who ought to be where her mother was until after the funeral.
"Then she will come back again. You will not keep her. She is mine, ain't you, Jerry?" Harold exclaimed, eagerly; while Jerry, who, with a child's instinct, scented danger from Harold's manner, and associated that danger with the strange man looking so curiously at her, sprang to her feet, which she stamped vigorously, while she cried, "'Ess, 'ess, 'ess," with her blue eyes anything but soft and sunny, as they usually were.