cheeks and
laughing lips and sparkling brown eyes, came racing into the room.
She was in her nightgown, ready for bed, her feet were bare, and
under one arm she carried a doll.

"Come here, Greeba veg," said the Governor, and he brought the
children face to face, and then stood aside to watch them.

They regarded each other for a moment with the solemn aloofness that
only children know, twisting and curling aside, eyeing one another
furtively, neither of them seeming so much as to see the other, yet
neither seeing anything or anybody else. This little freak of child
manners ran its course, and then Sunlocks, never heeding his dusty
pinafore, or the little maiden's white nightgown, but glancing down
at her bare feet, and seeming to remember that when his own were
shoeless someone carried him, stepped up to her, put his arms about
her, and with lordly, masculine superiority of strength proceeded to
lift her bodily in his arms. The attempt was a disastrous failure,
and in another moment the two were rolling over each other on the
floor; a result that provoked the little maiden's direst wrath and
the blank astonishment of little Sunlocks.

But before the tear-drop of vexation was yet dry on Greeba's face, or
the silent bewilderment had gone from the face of Sunlocks, she was
holding out her doll in a sidelong way in his direction, as much as
to say he might look at it if he liked, only he must not think that
she was asking him; and he, nothing loth for her fierce reception of
his gallant tender, was devouring the strange sight with eyes full of
awe.

Then followed some short inarticulate chirps, and the doll was passed
to Sunlocks, who turned the strange thing--such as eyes of his had
never beheld--over and over and over, while the little woman brought
out from dark corners of the room, and from curious recesses unknown
save to her own hands and knees, a slate with a pencil and sponge
tied to it by a string, a picture-book whereof the binding hung
loose, some bits of ribbon, red and blue, and finally three tiny cups
and saucers with all the accompanying wonder of cream jug and teapot.
In three minutes more two little bodies were sitting on their
haunches, two little tongues were cackling and gobbling, the room was
rippling over with a merry twitter, the strange serious air was gone
from the little faces, the little man and the little maid were far
away already in the little world of childhood, and all the universe
bes