"Me, too," cried Orme, standing by with straddled legs and wide-open eyes fixed on Mr. Pelham.
"Me yike her ever so," chimed in Ross, ambling up and joining the group, murmuring, as no one attended to him, that he would carry her in his two arms.
Sandy was staggering towards them laden with the baby.
In her dark, flashing beauty this baby, with her vivid face, her quick movements, her vitality, her curious coquetry of advance and withdrawal, was a revelation to the little boys. Only David—silent and superior—still held aloof, till the baby suddenly saw him and claimed him for another slave.
"Up!—up!" she called, in the imperious monosyllables by which she declared her will, holding out her arms to David and beating an impatient tattoo on Sandy with her toes. No boy could have resisted the flattery—least of all David, whom his mother often set to "mind" the babes because he was so good to them. And David—a sudden flush and smile illumining his face—took her from Sandy's unwilling clasp.
No apologies were made that day. In David's arms the baby accompanied her new friends—all clamouring, all seeking to amuse—down the hill to the gate.
Marjorie and Mr. Pelham followed slowly. If the man found the young girl interesting, he was to her equally so. She had come across no one like him before. He had come out of a world of which she knew nothing—of which, until to-day, she had never thought. Not many working people had hitherto come under her notice.