Mr. Pats Little Girl | Page 2

odd, guttural voice close to her asking, "What is the matter, little girl?"
If the voice was strange, the figure she saw when she looked up was stranger still. A gaunt old man in a suit of rusty black, with straggling gray hair and beard, stood holding his hat in his hand, gazing at her with eyes so bright they made her uneasy.
"Nothing," she answered, rising hastily.
But the visitor continued to stand there and smile at her, shaking his head and repeating, "Mustn't cry."
"I am not crying," Rosalind insisted, glancing over her shoulder to make sure of a way of escape.
With a long, thin finger this strange person now pointed toward the house, saying something she understood to be an inquiry for Miss Herbert.
Miss Herbert was the housekeeper, and Rosalind knew she was at church; but when she tried to explain, the old man shook his head, and taking from his pocket a tablet with a pencil attached, he held it out to her, touching his ear as he uttered the one word "Deaf."
Rosalind understood she was to write her answer, and somewhat flurried she sat down on the edge of the bench and with much deliberation and in large clear letters conveyed the information, "She is out."
The old man looked at the tablet and then at Rosalind, bowing and smiling as if well pleased. "You'll tell her I'm going to the city to-morrow?" he asked.
There was something very queer in the way he opened his mouth and used his tongue, Rosalind thought, as she nodded emphatically, feeling that this singular individual had her at an unfair advantage. At least she would find out who he was, and so, as she still held the tablet, she wrote, "What is your name?"
He laughed as if this were a joke, and searching in his pocket, produced a card which he presented with a bow. On it was printed "C.J. Morgan, Cabinet Work."
"What is your name?" he asked.
Rosalind hesitated. She was not sure it at all concerned this stranger to know her name, but as he stood smiling and waiting, she did not know how to refuse; so she bent over the tablet, her yellow braid falling over her shoulder, as she wrote, "Rosalind Patterson Whittredge."
"Mr. Pat's daughter?" There was a twinkle in the old man's eye, and surprise and delight in his voice.
Rosalind sprang up, her own eyes shining. "How stupid of me!" she cried. "Why, you must be the magician, and you have a funny old shop, where father used to play when he was little. Oh, I hope you will let me come to see you!" Suddenly remembering the tablet, she looked at it despairingly. She couldn't write half she wished to say.
Morgan, however, seemed to understand pretty clearly, to judge from the way he laughed and asked if Mr. Pat was well.
Rosalind nodded and wrote, "He has gone to Japan."
"So far? Coming home soon?"
With a mournful countenance she shook her head.
Morgan stood looking down on her with a smile that no longer seemed uncanny. Indeed, there was something almost sweet in the rugged face as he repeated, "Mr. Pat's little girl, well, well," as if it were quite incredible.
Rosalind longed to ask at least a dozen questions, but it is dampening to one's ardor to have to spell every word, and she only nodded and smiled in her turn as she handed back the tablet.
"I wish father had taught me to talk on my fingers," she thought, feeling that one branch of her education had been neglected. "Perhaps Uncle Allan will, when he comes."
She watched the odd figure till it disappeared around a turn in the trim garden path, then she picked up the big red pillow which had fallen on the grass, and replacing it in one corner of the bench, curled herself up against it. The hymn book lay forgotten.
"I believe things are really beginning to happen," she said to herself. "You need not pretend they are not, for they are," she added, shaking her finger at the griffins with their provoking lack of expression. "You wouldn't make friends with anybody, not to save their lives, and it seemed as if I were never to get acquainted with a soul, when here I have met the magician in the most surprising way. And to think I didn't know him!"
The dream spirit was abroad in the garden. Across the lawn the shadows made mysterious progress; the sunlight seemed sifted through an enchanted veil, and like the touch of fairy fingers was the summer breeze against Rosalind's cheek, as with her head against the red pillow, she travelled for the first time in her life back into the past.
Back to the dear old library where two students worked, and where from the windows one could see the tiled roofs of