He was very fond of Jerry, and on the Saturday afternoon when he sat
watching her strange play, noticing how graceful was every movement, and
how lovely the constantly varying expression of her face--from concern
and anxiety when she was the nurse to distress and pain and then
resignation and quietude in death when she took the role of the sick
woman--he felt himself moved by some mighty influence to right her at
once and put her in her proper place.
'It is more than I can bear. I can't even look Dolly straight in the
eye,' he said to his evil shadow, which answered back.
'You know nothing sure. Will you give up your prospects for a photograph
and a likeness which may be accidental?'
So his conscience was smothered again; but he would question the child,
and after her play was over he called her to him and taking her in his
lap, kissed the little grave face upon which the shadow of the scene she
had been enacting had left its impress.
'Jerry,' he said, 'that lady who just died in the bed with the cap on
was your mamma, was it not?'
''Ess,' was Jerry's reply, for she still adhered to her first
pronunciation of the word.
'And the other was the nurse?'
''Ess,' Jerry said again; 'Mah-nee.'
This was puzzling, for he had always supposed that by 'mah-nee' the
child meant 'mam-ma;' but he went on:
'Try to understand me, Jerry; try to think away back before you came in
the ship.
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