Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/64

 the door to Adam, as much as to say that if his coming had brought strife he was ready to go. But the Governor waved his hand, as though following his thought and dismissing it. Then lifting the child to his knee, he asked his name, whereupon the little man himself answered promptly that his name was Sunlocks.

"Michael," said Stephen Orry; "but I call him Sunlocks."

"Michael Sunlocks—a good name too. And what is his age?"

"Four years."

"Just the age of my own darling," said the Governor; and setting the child on his feet, he rang the bell and said, "Bring little Greeba here."

A minute later a brown-haired lassie, with ruddy cheeks and laughing lips and sparkling brown eyes, came racing into the room. She was in her night-gown, ready for bed, her feet were bare, and under one arm she carried a doll.

"Come here, Greeba veg," said the Governor, and be brought the children face to face, and then stood aside to watch them.

They regarded each other for a moment with the solemn aloofness that only children know, twisting and curling aside, eyeing one another furtively, neither of them seeming so much as to see the other, yet neither seeing anything or anybody else This little freak of child manners ran its course; and then Sunlocks, never heeding his dusty pinafore, or the little maiden's white night-gown, but glancing down at her bare feet, and seeming to remember that when his own were shoeless some one carried him, stepped up to her, put his arms about her, and with lordly, masculine superiority of strength, proceeded to lift her bodily in his arms. The attempt was a failure, and in another moment the two were rolling over each other on the floor; a result that provoked the little maiden's direst wrath and the blank astonishment of little Sunlocks.

But before the tear-drop of vexation was yet dry on Greeba's face, or the silent bewilderment had gone from the face of Sunlocks, she was holding out her doll in a sidelong way in his direction, as much as to say he might look at it if he liked, only he must not think that she was asking him; and he, nothing loth for her fierce reception of his gallant tender, was devouring the strange sight with eyes full of awe.

Then followed some short inarticulate chirps, and the doll was passed to Sunlocks, who turned the strange thing—such as eyes of his had never beheld—over and over and over, while the little woman brought out from dark corners of the room,