Jerome, A Poor Man | Page 2

frill of her hood in front and fall softly over her pink cheeks. Lucina's face was very fair and sweet--the face of a good and gentle little girl, who always minded her mother and did her daily tasks.
Her dark blue eyes, set deeply under seriously frowning childish brows, surveyed Jerome with innocent wonder; her pretty mouth drooped anxiously at the corners. Jerome knew her well enough, although he had never before exchanged a word with her. She was little Lucina Merritt, whose father had money and bought her everything she wanted, and whose mother rigged her up like a puppet, as he had heard his mother say.
"No, ain't sick," he said, in a half-intelligible grunt. A cross little animal poked into wakefulness in the midst of its nap in the sun might have responded in much the same way. Gallantry had not yet developed in Jerome. He saw in this pretty little girl only another child, and, moreover, one finely shod and clothed, while he went shoeless and threadbare. He looked sulkily at her blue silk hood, pulled his old cap down with a twitch to his black brows, and shrugged himself closer to the warm rock.
The little girl eyed his bare toes. "Be you cold?" she ventured.
"No, ain't cold," grunted Jerome. Then he caught sight of something in her hand--a great square of sugar-gingerbread, out of which she had taken only three dainty bites as she came along, and in spite of himself there was a hungry flash of his black eyes.
Lucina held out the gingerbread. "I'd just as lives as not you had it," said she, timidly. "It's most all there. I've just had three teenty bites."
Jerome turned on her fiercely. "Don't want your old gingerbread," he cried. "Ain't hungry--have all I want to home."
The little Lucina jumped, and her blue eyes filled with tears. She turned away without a word, and ran falteringly, as if she could not see for tears, across the field; and there was a white lamb trotting after her. It had appeared from somewhere in the fields, and Jerome had not noticed it. He remembered hearing that Lucina Merritt had a cosset lamb that followed her everywhere. "Has everything," he muttered--"lambs an' everything. Don't want your old gingerbread."
Suddenly he sprang up and began feeling in his pocket; then he ran like a deer after the little girl. She rolled her frightened, tearful blue eyes over her shoulder at him, and began to run too, and the cosset lamb cantered faster at her heels; but Jerome soon gained on them.
"Stop, can't ye?" he sang out. "Ain't goin' to hurt ye. What ye 'fraid of?" He laid his hand on her green-shawled shoulders, and she stood panting, her little face looking up at him, half reassured, half terrified, from her blue silk hood-frills and her curls.
"Like sas'fras?" inquired Jerome, with a lordly air. An emperor about to bestow a largess upon a slave could have had no more of the very grandeur of beneficence in his mien.
Lucina nodded meekly.
Jerome drew out a great handful of strange articles from his pocket, and they might, from his manner of handling them, have been gold pieces and jewels. There were old buttons, a bit of chalk, and a stub of slate-pencil. There were a horse-chestnut and some grains of parched sweet-corn and a dried apple-core. There were other things which age and long bondage in the pocket had brought to such passes that one could scarcely determine their identities. From all this Jerome selected one undoubted treasure--a great jagged cut of sassafras root. It had been nicely scraped, too, and looked white and clean.
"Here," said Jerome.
"Don't you want it?" asked Lucina, shyly.
"No--had a great piece twice as big as that yesterday. Know where there's lots more in the cedar swamp. Here, take it."
"Thank you," said Lucina, and took it, and fumbled nervously after her little pocket.
"Why don't you eat it?" asked Jerome, and Lucina took an obedient little nibble.
"Ain't that good and strong?"
"It's real good," replied Lucina, smiling gratefully.
"Mebbe I'll dig you some more some time," said Jerome, as if the cedar swamp were a treasure-chest.
"Thank you," said the little girl. Then she timidly extended the gingerbread again. "I only took three little bites, an' it's real nice, honest," said she, appealingly.
But she jumped again at the flash in Jerome's black eyes.
"Don't want your old gingerbread!" he cried. "Ain't hungry; have more'n I want to eat to home. Guess my folks have gingerbread. Like to know what you're tryin' to give me victuals for! Don't want any of your old gingerbread!"
"It ain't old, honest," pleaded Lucina, tearfully. "It ain't old--Hannah, she just baked it this morning." But the boy was gone, pelting hard across the field, and all there was for the little girl to do was to