As the two woodsmen discussed the situation, the child, a delicate-featured, blue-eyed girl, was gazing up from under her mop of bright hair, first at one, then at the other. Walley Johnson was the one who had come in answer to her long wailing, who had hugged her close, and wrapped her up, and crooned over her in his pity, and driven away the terrors. But she did not like to look at him, though his gaunt, sallow face was strong and kind.
People are apt to talk easy generalities about the intuition of children! As a matter of fact, the little ones are not above judging quite as superficially and falsely as their elders. The child looked at her protector’s sightless eye, then turned away and sidled over to McWha with one hand coaxingly outstretched. McWha’s mouth twisted sourly. Without appearing to see the tiny hand, he deftly evaded it. Stooping over the dead man, he picked him up, straightened him out decently on his 112 bunk, and covered him away from sight with the blankets.
“Ye needn’t be so crusty to the kid, when she wants to make up to ye!” protested Walley, as the little one turned back to him with a puzzled look in her tearful blue eyes.
“It’s all alike they be, six, or sixteen, or sixty-six!” remarked McWha, sarcastically, stepping to the door. “I don’t want none of ’em! Ye kin look out for ’er! I’m for the horses.”
“Don’t talk out so loud,” admonished the little one. “You’ll wake Daddy. Poor Daddy’s sick!”
“Poor lamb!” murmured Johnson, folding her to his great breast with a pang of pity. “No; we won’t wake daddy. Now tell me, what’s yer name?”
“Daddy called me Rosy-Lilly!” answered the child, playing with a button on Johnson’s vest. “Is he gettin’ warmer now? He was so cold, and he wouldn’t speak to Rosy-Lilly.”
“Rosy-Lilly it be!” agreed Johnson. “Now we jest won’t bother daddy, him bein’ so sick! You an’ me’ll git supper.”
The cabin was warm now, and on tiptoe Johnson and Rosy-Lilly went about their work, setting the table, “bilin’ the tea,” and frying the bacon. When Red McWha came in from the barn, and stamped the snow from his feet, Rosy-Lilly said 113 “Hush!” laid her finger on her lip, and glanced meaningly at the moveless shape in the bunk.
“We mus’ let ’im sleep, Rosy-Lilly says,” decreed Johnson, with an emphasis which penetrated McWha’s unsympathetic consciousness, and elicited a non-committal grunt.