Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/344

 of course this Fatty or Horsehead or whatever it is can't say it right out, so he says it to himself about twenty-three or twenty-four thousand times a day, as nearly as he can reckon—he always was weak in arithmetic."

"You might let him write in your autograph album," said the woman child, brightly, to Miss Lansdale.

"I know what he'd write if he got the chance," I added incitingly. But it did not avail. Miss Lansdale remained incurious and merely said, "Long golden braids," as one trying to picture them.

"And later a little row of curls over each ear, and a tiny chain with a locket around the neck. I had a picture once—"

"You have had many pictures."

"Yes—two are many if you've had nothing else."

But she was now regarding the woman child with a curious, close look, almost troubled in its intensity.

"Do you look like your mother?" she asked.

"Papa says I do, and Uncle Maje thinks so too. She was very pretty." This came with an unconscious placidity.

"She looks almost as her mother's picture did," I said.

When the child had gone, Miss Lansdale searched my face long before speaking. She seemed to hesitate for words, and at length to speak of other matters than those which might have perplexed her.