Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/126

118 "You what? And you knowed!"

"I saw him, and I knew him," Bobby answered slowly, much abashed.

There was perspiration on his lip and the hair about his temples was damp; the vigorous color of his cheeks was stained by the flush which followed her correction, and he swallowed with his small soft throat in such a way that she leaned forward and dragged him close to her, stroking his head, laughing to cover the tenderness in her eyes.

Aunty May appeared in the doorway and called the children. Bessy started at once, waddling on her shapeless little legs, but the boy lingered and said:

"I try to learn the things you teach me, Aunt Helen. If I learn as much as you do, will you marry me when I grow up?"

"Oh, Bobby, if you're as nice a man as you are a little boy, if you try to learn always, if you are as kind then as you are now, you'd make any girl happy."

"But you!" slapping her knee insistently and looking into her face with a frown which told that he would not be put off. "Not any girl! You!"

"I'll be an old woman, then. But if I should ever have a little girl I don't know any boy I'd like to have her love except you."

Bobby eyed her with sober skepticism a moment and started away complaining:

"But you won't ever promise!"

Taylor had approached, overheard and watched, struck by the quality that was in the girl's face and voice and manner as she talked with the child; a tenderness was there, a strength of maternal feeling that he had