“My dear! my dear!” cried Miss Amanda, dropping on her knees beside the little girl, “don’t talk so! I know your uncle must love you.”
“Do you s’pose so?” queried Carolyn May, trying not to cry.
“He must! How could he help loving you? Immersed as Joseph Stagg is in business and his own selfish projects, he cannot be so hard-hearted as not to love his only sister’s child.”
Carolyn May clutched at her, suddenly and tightly.
“Oh, Miss Mandy!” she gasped, “don’t you s’pose he loves other folks, too? You know—folks he’d begun to love ever so long ago?”
The woman’s smooth cheeks burned suddenly, and she stood up.
“I’m ’most sure he’d never stop loving a person, if he’d once begun to love ’em,” said Carolyn May, with a high opinion of the faithfulness of Uncle Joe’s character. “But how do I know he ever has loved me the least tiny bit?”
Miss Amanda was evidently impressed by this query. How could the child be sure? Mr. Stagg was not in the habit of revealing his deeper thoughts and feelings to the world. And, yet, if she would but admit it, Amanda Parlow believed that she, if any person could, rightly measured the hardware dealer’s character.
She sat down in a low rocking-chair and drew Carolyn May into her lap. The little girl sobbed a bit, but rested her head quietly on the woman’s bosom.
“Do you want to know if your Uncle Joe loves you?” she asked Carolyn May at last. “Do you?”