Little Letta’s heart was full to overflowing, so much so that she could scarcely speak while walking along holding Robin’s hand. But there was more than mere emotion in her bosom—memory was strangely busy in her brain, puzzling her with dreamy recognitions both as to sights and sounds.
“It’s so like home!” she murmured once, looking eagerly round.
“Is it?” said Robin with intense interest. “Look hard at it, little one; do you recognise any object that used to be in your old home?”
The child shook her head sadly. “No, not exactly—everything is so like, and—and yet not like, somehow.”
They came just then upon a clearing among sugar-cane, in the midst of which stood a half-ruined hut, quite open in front and thatched with broad leaves. On a bench near the entrance was seated an old grey-haired Malay man with a bottle beside him. Nearer to the visitors a young girl was digging in the ground.
“That’s the old Malay, for certain,” said Sam; “see, the old rascal has gone pretty deep already into the bottle. Ask the girl, Letta, what his name is.”
Sam did not at first observe that the child was trembling very much and gazing eagerly at the old man. He had to repeat the question twice before she understood him, and then she asked the girl, without taking her eyes off the old man.
“Who is he?” responded the girl in the Malay tongue, “why, that’s old Georgie—drunken Georgie.”
She had scarcely uttered the words when Letta uttered a wild cry, ran to the old man, leaped into his arms, and hugged him violently.
The man was not only surprised but agitated. He loosened the child’s hold so as to be able to look at her face.