‘That’s English,’ he cried, delighted with her progress, but when he spoke to her again, her answer was, ‘Yah, yah,’ which seemed to him so nonsensical that after a few attempts to make her say ‘yes,’ and to teach her what it meant, he gave up his lesson for the remainder of the day and talked to her by signs and gestures which she seemed to understand.

Whatever he did she did, and he saw her more than once imitating his grandmother’s motions as well as his own, to the life.

Late in the afternoon Mr. St. Claire came to the cottage, curious to see the child, who, at sight of him, retreated behind Harold, and then peered shyly up at him, with a look in her great blue eyes which puzzled him on the instant, as one is frequently puzzled with a likeness to something or somebody he tries in vain to recall.  In this instance it was hardly the eyes themselves, but rather the way they looked at him, and the sweep of the long lashes, together with a firm shutting together of the lips, which struck Mr. St. Claire as familiar, and when with a swift movement of her little hand, she swept the mass of golden hair back from her forehead, he would have sworn that he had seen that trick a thousand times, and yet he could not place it.  That she was the child of the dead woman he believed, and as the mother was French, so also was she.  He had once passed two years in France, and was master of the language; so he spoke to the child in French, but though she seemed to understand him she made no reply, until he said to her: 

‘Where is your mother, little one?’

’Then she answered, promptly, ‘Dead,’ but the language was German, not French.

‘Ho-ho!  You are a little Dutchman,’ Mr. St. Claire said, with some surprise in his voice.

Then as he noted the purity of her complexion, her fair hair and blue eyes, he said to himself: 

’Her father was a German, and probably they lived in Germany, but the mother was certainly French.’

His own knowledge of German was very limited, but he could speak it a little, and turning again to the child he managed to say: 

‘What is your name!’

‘Der-ree,’ was the reply, and Harold exclaimed: 

’That’s it; she means Jerry; that’s short for the name on her clothes, which you said was pronounced Jereen.  I have christened her Jerry, and she is my little girl, ain’t you, Jerry!’

‘Yah—­oui—­’ess,’ was the answer, and there was a gleam of triumph in the blue eyes which flashed up to Harold for approbation.

She had not, of course, understood a word he said, except, indeed her name; but the tone of his voice was interrogatory, and seemed to expect an affirmative answer, which she gave in three languages, emphasizing the ‘’ess’ with a nod of her head, as if greatly pleased with herself.

‘Bravo!’ Harold shouted.  ’She can say yes.  I taught her, and I shall have her talking English in a few days as well as I do, shan’t I, Jerry?’