Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/403

 Yet she sighed a little as she looked into the shrewd, the guilty, and the altogether unhappy face of Lonely,—sighed as one might over a stain in a fine new gown, or at a cloud on the sky-line of a perfect day.

"Yes, of course. Lonely! Don't you see, you 're a hero now! And there 's Mrs. Persons hunting all round for you!"

Lonely looked relieved, and as the grateful mother of the girl he had dragged from under the raft came over to him, he batted his eyes solemnly, and tried to look wistful, and puffed out his chest with a new sense of dignity.

The pale-browed mother took the thin and sunburned face between her two trembling hands. Twice she essayed to speak and twice she failed, the quiet tears welling up to her eyes, and rolling unheeded down her cheeks. Then she deliberately bent over and kissed the worst young limb in all Chamboro, on his hot and perspiring young brow.

"My hero!" she murmured, inadequately.

Her arms were locked about the still sodden and shrinking little figure, to whom love was so alien and so unknown. He tried to writhe and twist away, but could not.