The child seemed never to walk, she was always frisking about, one hardly
knew if her feet touched the ground.
"Poor child! happy child," he groaned, rather than murmured, as she
disappeared around the corner of the veranda. She was a chubby,
roundfaced child, with great brown eyes and curls like yellow floss; from
her childishness and ignorance of what children at ten years of age are
usually taught, she was supposed by strangers to be no more than eight
years of age; she was an imperious little lady, impetuous, untrained,
self-reliant, and, from much intercourse with strangers, not at all shy,
looking out upon the world with confiding eyes, and knowing nothing to be
afraid of or ashamed of. Nurse had been her only teacher; she could
barely read a chapter in the New Testament, and when her father gave her
ten cents and then five more she could not tell him how many cents she
held in her hand.
"No matter, I don't want you to count money," he said.
Before he recovered his breath and self-possession she was at his side
with the flowers she had hastily plucked--scarlet geranium, heliotrope,
sweet alyssum, the gorgeous yellow and orange poppy, and the lovely blue
and white lupine. He received them with a listless smile and laid them
upon his knee; as he bade her again to eat the strawberries she brought
them to his side, now and then coaxing a "particularly splendid" one into
his mouth, pressing them between his lips with her stained fingers.
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