Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/45

 rose to her feet as the Superior came towards her.

"You may leave him," said the nun, gravely—"for a time, at least; we can do no less in memory of his mother."

The nurse kissed the sleeping baby and went away with tears dimming her brown eyes.

The secretary bent and lifted the sturdy figure in her thin arms. It was no light weight, and the effort she made woke Frederick Addison Malcolm from his slumbers. He turned one sleepy blue eye on her, then the other, and a look of supreme discontent settled upon his brow. He sat up with a ruffled countenance, and beat his small heels upon the secretary's stomach. She put him hastily on the floor.

"Fweddie tan yalk hisself," he remarked, with dignity. He toddled over to the door where the Superior stood surveying him with interest and awe. He looked up into her face and bobbed his head with ingratiating friendliness.

"Fweddie tan yalk," he repeated. Then he slid his dimpled hand into her soft cool one, buried his curls in her black robe, and thought better of his proposition. "But Fweddie would like oo to cawwy him," he added, with a little gurgle of delight over the happy thought.