"Please, teacher."
Pearl smiled back, reassuringly, and his eyes responded.
"Did you get a place yet?" he asked eagerly.
"No, I didn't," she answered. She was going to tell him that she would not need a place, for she was going away, but something stopped her. Somehow she could not dim the radiance of those eager eyes.
"Teacher!" he cried coming nearer, "would you come and live with us? My mother is just sweet, and she would like to have you. She is away today, to Millford, and won't be home till eight o'clock. I stayed at home because I wanted to see you. My mother watched you going to the houses—we can see all of them from our house—and every time you came away from them—she was glad. We have a spy-glass, and we could see—that's how we knew how nice you were, teacher"—he was almost near enough to touch her now. "You can have my bed if you will come."
Pearl wanted to draw him to her and kiss the fear forever from his face, but she was still afraid he might vanish if she touched him.
"My mother thinks you are nice," he said softly. "We saw you patting Cowan's dog and walking home with the children. One day we saw you walking home with Edgar Zinc. He held your hand—and my mother got to thinking that it might have been me that you had by the hand, and she cried that day, and couldn't tell why. It wasn't because she was lonely—because she never is lonely. How could she be when she has me? She tells me every day she is not lonely. But we'd like fine to have you live with us, teacher, because you're nice."
Pearl's arm was around him now, and he let her draw him over to her.
"Tell me all about yourself," she said, with a curious tugging at her heart.
"We're orphans," he said simply, "mother and I—that means our people are dead. We had no people, only just our daddy. We didn't need any people only him, and he's dead. And then we had Mr. Bowen—and he's dead. Don't it beat all how people die? Are you an orphan?"