The child nodded and looked about her, and drew instinctively a little nearer to the boy.
“Doesn’t any one come to see you?” asked Comethup.
“Only Mrs. Blissett, in the morning. Mrs. Blissett makes the beds, and gives me my breakfast and my dinner; then she comes again when it’s dark, and puts me to bed. And she grumbles all the time, and keeps on asking what the Lord made brats for. That’s me, you know,” she added, innocently.
Comethup looked properly sympathetic, and asked, “What is your name?”
“’Linda. I think it’s a longer name than that, but father calls me ’Linda. What is your name?”
Comethup got it out trippingly; it was always a difficult matter, in those early years, to get the uncouth thing off his tongue. The girl looked puzzled, and begged him to repeat it; he did so, with a flush upon his face. He was already beginning to understand, by the surprise with which the name was always received, that there was something remarkable and even ridiculous about it. But this girl apparently liked it; laughed softly and turned it over on her tongue, and said “Comethup,” with a little break in the middle of it; “yes, it’s a pretty name.”
Comethup was gratified, and had a sudden wish that he had paid her the same compliment. They stood awkwardly and shyly looking at each other, until the slow, heavy steps of some one trudging through the dead leaves bestirred them to a recollection of time and place.
“That’s Mrs. Blissett,” said the child with a sigh, “and I shall have go to bed. Come back here where she won’t see you. Can’t you hear her coming, and grumbling to herself all the way?” The question ended with a little ripple of laughter, and Comethup, glancing at the child, saw all her white teeth showing in a smile, and her eyes dancing with it. She drew him back among the shadows of the trees while the heavy-footed, murmuring Mrs. Blissett pounded solemnly along toward the house. They stood quite still, until the footsteps had died away, and then, to Comethup’s great surprise and consternation, this small girl-child caught him by his jacket, kissed him swiftly, and cried in a breath: “Good-night, Comethup; come and see me to-morrow,” and sped away from him through the trees.
Comethup stood, in a dazed condition, looking after her for some moments, and softly rubbing his cheek with one hand where her lips had touched him; and then, with very mixed emotions, set off for home. But though the garden was the same, and though the wind whispered through the trees, and the dead leaves drove at him, it had no further terrors for him; had, indeed, become a place of wonder and delight, as everything else seemed to become in his small world. His father, his little room at home, his mother’s sleeping place among the green mounds in the churchyard, the captain and the building of the forts, Brian and his reckless expeditions—all these were things of delight to the boy. And now, in the midst of them, had sprung up a new wonder, growing beautifully in the midst of the terrors which had seemed to be about her. He went home with a fast-beating heart, full of his new discovery, and anxious to unbosom himself regarding it to some one of sympathy.
He was never quite sure of his father; he loved him very dearly, and thought his soft voice and the quiet, caressing words he used better than all the music he played in the church. But his father had a dreamy way of looking over him, or right through him, when some question of moment was being discussed; of losing himself suddenly in the maze of his thoughts, and wandering off somewhere where Comethup could not follow him. So that Comethup often hesitated about giving a confidence to him, because he feared, in his sensitive little soul, that his father might not follow it out—whatever it might be—patiently to the end, as it should be followed; might forget what the all-important subject was before the tale had half been told. He hesitated now, and was obliged to confess, sitting up in bed in the moonlight, with his hands clasped round his linen-covered knees, that his father might not understand, and might—worst thought of all—look dreamily at him, and stroke his hair, and say, with a maddening smile: “Yes, yes, my boy. Of course; just so,” and begin to hum an air from some of his beloved music and straightway forget all else. It was quite certain that it was impossible for him to tell his father.