Hagar sighed. "I don't think anybody ought to be made to dress like that. It—it smudged my soul just to look at it."
"Convicts," said Miss Serena, "are not usually people of fine feelings. And you ought to take warning by him never to do anything wicked."
A silence while the trees and the flowering blackberry bushes went by; then, "Aunt Serena—"
"Yes?"
"The woman over there with the baby—she says her husband got hurt in an accident—and she's got to get to him—and she hasn't got any money. The stout man gave her something, and I think the captain wouldn't let her pay. Can't I—wouldn't you—can't I—give her just a little?"
"The trouble is," said Miss Serena, "that you never know whether or not those people are telling the truth. And we aren't rich, as you know, Hagar. But if you want to, you can go ask your grandfather if he will give you something to give."
The dark little girl undoubled her white-stockinged legs, got up, smoothed down her blue gingham dress, and went forward until the tobacco-smoke wrapped her in a fragrant fog. Out of it came, genially, the Colonel's voice, rich as old madeira, shot like shot silk with curious electric tensions and strains and agreements, a voice at once mellifluous and capable of revealments demanding other adjectives, a voice that was the Colonel's and spoke the Colonel from head to heel. It went with his beauty, intact yet at fifty-eight, with the greying amber of his hair, mustache, and imperial; with his eyes, not large but finely shaped and coloured; with his slightly aquiline nose; with the height and easy swing of his body that was neither too spare nor too full. It went with him from head to foot, and, though it was certainly not a loud voice nor a too-much-used one, it quite usually dominated whatever group for the moment enclosed the Colonel. He was speaking now in a kind of energetic, golden drawl. "So he came up to me and said, 'Dash it, Ashendyne! if gentlemen can't be allowed in this degenerate age to rule their own households and arrange their own duels—'" He became aware of the child standing by him, and put out a well-formed, nervous hand. "Yes, Gipsy? What is it you want now?"
Hagar explained sedately.
"Her husband hurt and can't get to him to nurse him?" said the Colonel. "Well, well! That's pretty bad! I suppose we must take up a collection. Pass the hat, Gipsy!"