Lifting the hanging a few inches at the bottom he thrust the clothes underneath, and called:
"Do you feel well enough to get up, Rose? If you do, I will make coffee, and we will have a meal!"
"Thank you, thank you, good George!" she cried, with the naivete of an innocent child. "I will dress and come out, for oh, I am so hungry and thirsty!"
He smiled to himself at her sweet child-likeness, and hurried away to make the coffee.
Whether the aroma of the coffee reached her senses and hurried her, it would be impossible to say, but certainly, in an incredibly short space of time (for a woman) she drew aside the hanging a little, and asked:
"May I come, please?"
He flung aside the hanging, his smile, as well as his voice saying: "Come!"
Then as she appeared before him, bright, fresh from her sound restful sleep, her hair carefully groomed and coiled in a crown on her head, her cheek glowing with the prettiest, tenderest blushes, he thought how beautiful she was!
A woman, evidently in years, (as she would be judged in the east) yet a pure child in character and manner.
"How do you feel, little Rose?" he asked, taking her hand in greeting.