Tamea turned her head as they entered the room but did not trouble to rise. Dan noticed that her eyes were bright with unshed tears, that her lips quivered pitifully, that the brave little smile of welcome she summoned for him was very wistful.
“Tamea, this is Julia, who will take good care of you.”
The Queen of Riva sat up and looked Julia over. Julia, fully alive to the tremendous drama of the situation, had wreathed her plain features in a smile that was almost a friendly leer; her Irish blue eyes glittered with curiosity and amiability.
“Hello, Tammy, darlin’,” she crooned. “Come here to me, you poor gir’rl, till I take care o’ you. Glory be to the Heavenly Father, did you ever see the like o’ that shmile? An’ thim eyes, Mrs. Pippy! An’ her hair that long she’s sittin’ on it! Wirra, will you look at her complexion! Like ripe shtrawberries smothered in cream.”
Julia held out her arms. Tamea stared at her for several seconds, then carefully laid aside her accordion and stood up.
“She is a plain woman, but her heart is one of gold,” she said to Dan, and went to Julia and was gathered into her arms.
Poor Julia! Like Tamea, she too was an exile, far from a land she loved and the loving of which, with her kind, amounts to a religious duty. Julia was a servant, a plain, uneducated woman, but at birth God had given her the treasure for which Solomon, in his mature years, had prayed. She had an understanding heart, and to it now she pressed the lonely Tamea, the while she stroked the girl’s wondrous, rippling, jet-black tresses.
“Poor darlin’,” she crooned. “You poor orphant, you.”
“I will kiss you,” Tamea declared, and did it. She looked over her shoulder at Dan Pritchard. “And you will give me this woman all for myself?” she queried.
“Yes, my dear,” he answered brazenly. “Julia belongs to you. Did she not give herself to you? Why should I withhold my permission? Julia is your slave.”