Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/154

144 the final verb of his sentence; and then the group returned to their vacant contemplations.

No such indifference was shown in the parlor, where Jim had carried the little girl, and, leaving her on the grim hair-cloth sofa, had summoned the landlady to care for her.

"The poor little creatur! Now, I never! Ain't she jes' skin an bone," ejaculated the kind-hearted woman, as she bustled about, with pillows and shawls "and, good gracious! I do declare, ef her feet ain't jest as stun cold as ef she wus dead," she cried out, beginning to rub them so energetically that the poor little waif shrank and screamed, even in her sleep, and presently opened her eyes—the most beautiful and most terrified eyes I ever saw, hazel brown, large, deep-set, with depths of appeal in their lightest glance.

"Where is my father?" she said, beginning to cry.

"Don't cry, dear. Your father is asleep in the other room. I 'll take care of you," said Jim, trying in his awkward boy fashion to stroke her head.

She looked up at him gratefully. "Oh, you 're the kind gentleman that picked me up in the stage," and she shut her eyes contentedly and was asleep again in a moment.

It seemed that she and her father had taken the stage some ten miles back. I had been too absorbed in my own dismal reflections to notice them, the man was almost unconscious from the effects