“Is it a long time since you came here?”
“O yes, very very long!” replied the child, with a sad weary look; “so long that—that you can’t think.”
“Come, dear; tell us all about it,” said Robin in a coaxing tone,—“all about mamma and how you came here.”
“Very well,” said Letta, quite pleased with the request. Clearing her little throat with the emphasis of one who has a long story to tell, she began with the statement that “mamma was a darling.”
From this, as a starting-point, she gave an amazing and rambling account of the joys and toys of infancy, which period of life seemed to have been spent in a most beautiful garden full of delicious fruits and sunshine, where the presiding and ever present angel was mamma. Then she told of a dark night, and a sudden awaking in the midst of flames and smoke and piercing cries, when fierce men seized her and carried her away, put her into a ship, where she was dreadfully sick for a long long time, until they landed on a rocky island, and suddenly she found herself “there,”—pointing as she spoke to the little garden below them. While she was yet describing her feelings on arrival, a voice shouting Letta was heard, and she instantly struggled from Robin’s knee.
“O let me go!” she cried. “It’s Meerta calling me, and I never let her call twice.”
“Why? Would she be angry?”
“No, but she would be sorry. Do let me go!”
“But won’t you let us go too?” asked Sam.
“O yes, if you want to come. This is the road,” she added, as she took Robin by the hand; “and you must be very careful how you go, else you’ll fall and hurt yourselves.”