"Then he shouldn't have letters," said the child, decidedly. "I'll tell him so to-morrow."
As she danced about, her white dress and sunny curls gleaming in and out among the heliotrope and scarlet geranium that one of the flower-loving boarders was cultivating, her father called her name; it was a queer name, and she did not like it. She liked her second name, Prudence, better. But Nurse had said, when she complained to her, that the girls would call her "Prudy" for short, and "Jerrie" was certainly a prettier name than that.
"Jerrie," her father called.
The sound was so weak and broken by a cough that she did not turn her head or answer until he had called more than twice. But she flew to him when she was sure that he had called her, and kissed his flabby cheek and smoothed back the thin locks of white hair. His black eyes were burning like two fires beneath his white brows, his lips were ashy, and his breath hot and hurried. Two letters were trembling in his hand, two open letters, and one of them was in several fluttering sheets; this handwriting was a lady's, Jeroma recognized that, although she could not read even her own name in script.
"O, papa, those are the letters that made you sick! I'll throw them away to the lions," she cried, trying to snatch them. But he kept them in his fingers and tried to speak.
"I'll be rested in a moment, eat those strawberries—and then I have—something to talk to you about."
She surveyed the table critically, bread and fruit and milk; there was nothing beside.
"I've had my breakfast! O, papa, I've forgotten your flowers! Mrs. Heath said you might have them every morning."
"Run and get them then, and never wait for me to call you—it tires me too much."
"Poor papa! And I can howl almost as loud as the lions themselves."