Just splendid. Just delightful. That was her way of expressing herself.
I told her the story of Lady Macbeth.
"I am sure," she said when I had finished, "if you do it, it will be very beautiful. This evening, will you play that lullaby to me?"
I objected, for I did not like to play the piano at the hotel where we would be at once surrounded by these offensive acquaintances you are compelled to make in watering-places. But Bean begged so much that in the end I yielded.
While I was playing she seemed pale and strangely spiritual, watching me with adoring eyes. When I had finished she said nothing. Not one word. But when shortly afterwards she went to bed we shook hands, and I noticed that her's was as cold as ice.
"Good night, kiddy," I said.
She only pressed my hand a little harder, but said nothing.
The two maters noticing, of course, the incident and greatly exaggerating its importance, found in it some fuel for the cherished hopes that were burning in their breasts.
There was some more of that fuel in store. For when Bean and I went a few days later to Knaresborough, where I offered her a little row, what if she did not go and upset the boat, so that our row became a swim!
She uttered an imploring cry, but the next moment I had her in my arms. She clung to me quite desperately, her slender little body shaken by fright one moment, by a storm of laughter the next. The situation was not without danger, and the anxiety in my own heart made me rather tender with the kid. Yet, we safely reached the shore, where she lay exhausted, her hands keeping their hold of me, and murmured: