Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1905-07-20

smock slipped low down over her rosy
shoulders, and her little toes curled
pink in the green grass, for she had no
shoes on, having run away before she
was dressed by some oversight of her
black nurse, and down from her head,
oyer all her tiny body, hiding all save
the merest glimn1er of the loneliness of
her face, fell the most wonderful show
er of gold locks that ever a baby of
only two years possessed. She sat
there with the sunlight glancing on her
through a rift in the trees, all in web
of gold. floating and flying on the May
wind, and for a minute /, being well
instructed in such lore, thought she
was no mortal child. but something
more, as she was indeed. but in anoth-
er sense.
| stood there and looked and looked,
and she still puzzled up tiny handfuIs
of the green grass and never turned nor
knew me near, when suddenly there
burs- with a speed like storm, and a
otO1 III 4tIuEC0 II 01c vi DIQtC Liz, w I'LL
loud stamps of very fury of sound
which shook the earth as with d
mighty tread of thunder, out of a thick
er part of the wood, a great black stall
lion on morning gallop with all the
freedom of the spring and youth firing
his blood, and one step more and his
iron hoofs would have crushed the
child. But | was first l flung myself
upon her and threw her like feather
to one side. and that was the last
knew for awhile
When knew myself again there was
mighty pain in my shoulder, which
seemed to be the center of my whole
existence by reason of it, and there was
the feel of baby kisses on my lips. The
courage of her blood was in that tiny
maid. She had no thought of fight nor
tears, though she knew not but that
black thunderboit would return, and
she knew not what my CHASTITY silence
meant. She had crept close to me.
though she might well have been
bruised, such tender thing she was,
by the rough fling | had given her, and
was trying to kiss me awake as she
did her father And I, rude boy, al
IMMERSED in grace and tenderness and
hitherto all unsought of love, felt her
soft lips on mine and looking saw that
baby face all clouded about with gold.
and loved her forever.
knew not how to talk to little
petted treasure of life like that, and
l dared not speak. but looked at her,
and she seemed not to be afraid, but
laughed with a merriment Of triumph
at seeing me awake. and something
she said in the sweetest tongue of the
world, which yet made poor shift to
understand. for her baby speech, be-
sides its incompleteness, had also a
long drawn sweetness like the slow
trickle of honey. which she had caught
from those black people which she
had about her since her birth.
had great ado to move. though my
shoulder was not disjointed, only sore
ly bruised. but finally l was on my
feet again, though standing rather
weakly, and with an ear alert for the
return of that wild, eareering brute,
and the little maid was close at my
side, with one rosy set of fingers
clinging around two of my rough
brown ones with that sweet tenacity
Of baby grasp which can hold the
strongest thing on earth.
And she kept on jahbering with that
slow murmur Of sweetness, and stood
looking down at her, catching my
breath with the pain In my shoulder,
though It was out of my thoughts with
this new love of her. and then came
my father, Colonel John Chelmsford.
and Captain Geoffry Cavendish, walk
ing through the park in deep converse,
and came upon u.s. and stopped and
stared, as well they might.
Captain Geofry Cavendish was a
gaunt man with the hectic color of a
fever. which he had caught in the new
country, still in the hollows of his
cheeks He was quite young. with
sudden alertness of glances in bright
black eyes like the new color in jewels
when the light shifts. His daughter
has the same. though her eyes are
blue. Moreover. through having been
in the royal navy before be got a
The baby that caused
the accident
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