It did much for the poor youth’s recovery, the hearing himself addressed in such endearing terms, but he experienced a relapse when the monkey, responding to the endearments, ran with obvious joy into the child’s bosom, and submitted to a warm embrace.
“Oh, you darling!” repeated Letta; “where have you been? why did you go away? I thought you were dead. Naughty thing!”
Recollecting Robin with a shock of self-reproach, she dropped the monkey and ran to him.
“It is an old friend, I see,” he said with a languid smile, as she came up.
“Yes, yes; an old pet. I had lost him for a long time. But you’re not killed? Oh! I’m so glad.”
“Killed!” repeated Sam, who was down on his knees carefully examining the patient; “I should think not. He’s not even bruised—only stunned a little. Where did you fall from, Robin—the tree top?”
“No; from the edge of the precipice.”
“What! from the ledge sixty or seventy feet up there? Impossible! You would certainly have been killed if you had fallen from that.”
“So I certainly should,” returned Robin, “if God had not in his mercy grown trees and shrubs there, expressly, among other purposes, to save me.”
In this reply Robin’s mind was running on previous conversations which he had had with his friend on predestination.