Presently he shut his eyes, and the sunlight came in a soft rosy glow through his closed lids.  Then it was that a little girl came across the fields, clambering cautiously over the stone walls, lest she should tear her gown, stepping softly over the green grass in her little morocco shoes, and finally stood still in front of the boy sitting with his eyes closed in the hollow of the rock.  Twice she opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.  At last she gained courage.

“Be you sick, boy?” she inquired, in a sweet, timid voice.

Jerome opened his eyes with a start, and stared at the little quaint figure standing before him.  Lucina wore a short blue woollen gown; below it her starched white pantalets hung to the tops of her morocco shoes.  She wore also a white tier, and over that a little coat, and over that a little green cashmere shawl sprinkled with palm leaves, which her mother had crossed over her bosom and tied at her back for extra warmth.  Lucina’s hood was of quilted blue silk, and her smooth yellow curls flowed from under it quite down to her waist.  Moreover, her mother had carefully arranged four, two on each side, to escape from the 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.”