Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/19

Rh Philip thought not, but assured her he would hang the bonnet on a hook right in their section.

"Mrs. O'Shea doesn't like colored persons and always takes for granted they will steal; but as for me, I simply adore them. Daddy said I inherit liking them from my first father, who was a Southern man. He liked 'em a whole lot."

'You promised to tell me about your relations to your stepfather," suggested Philip as he settled the bonnet on a safe hook and then smiled into the eyes of his little companion. She had drawn off her huge cotton gloves, disclosing small, delicately shaped hands, which she folded primly in her lap. Her little face was much more childlike now that the ugly bonnet was gone. The corners of her mouth came up as though the weight of the bonnet had held them down. Her blue-black hair had broken from the tight braids into which Mrs. O'Shea had plaited it and curled rebelliously over the small, well-shaped head.

"Well," she said, settling herself comfortably and smiling into the frank blue eyes of her new friend, "I might just as well begin at the beginning. I always went with the studio, kind of like a cat or the gas range. Maybe that isn't the beginning, though. I guess my mother and