“See them,” she said, and she pointed to where the leaves were once more capering in the corner.
The boy looked, but his gaze would swing back to its North, which it found in two brown eyes.
“I saw you that day in Plymouth,” he said. “And I got out of their old jail, and I didn’t see anybody else that looked kind or nice among all those people.”
“Oh!” said Garde, suddenly remembering everything, “oh, you were—that boy marching with the old Indian. I was so sorry. And I am so glad that you got away. I am real glad you came to see me. Grandfather and I were down there for a visit—so I saw you. Oh dear me!” She looked at her young visitor with eyes open wide by amazement. It seemed almost too much to believe that the very boy she had seen and so pitied and liked, in that terrible procession at Plymouth, should actually be standing here before her in her grandfather’s garden! “Oh dear me!” she presently said again.
“I hate Plymouth!” said the boy, “but I like Boston.”
“I am so glad,” said Garde. “Will you tell me your name? Mine is Garde Merrill.”
The boy said: “My name is Adam Rust.”
“I was named for all my aunts,” the maid imparted, as if eager to set a troublesome matter straight at once, “Gertrude, Abigail, Rosella, Dorothy and Elizabeth. The first letters of their names spell G-A-R-D-E, Garde.”
Her visitor was rendered speechless for a moment. “Metacomet and all the Indians used to call me Little-Standing-Panther,” he then said, boyishly, not to be outdone in the matter of names.
“Metacomet—King Philip? Oh, then you are the boy that used to live with the Indians, and that was how they got you!” gasped the little maid. “Grandfather told auntie all about it. Oh, I wish I could live with the Indians! I am very, very sorry they got you! But I am glad you came to see me.”