ulse, the little legs clambered
up to the knee of Sunlocks, and the little head nestled close against
his breast.

"_I'll_ be your 'ickle boy."

"So you shall, my sweet one, and you shall come again and sit with
me, and sing to me, for I am very lonely sometimes, and your dear
voice will cheer me."

But the little man had forgotten his trouble by this time, and
scrambled back to the floor. There he sat on his haunches like a
frog, and cried, "Look! look! look!" as he held up a white pebble in
his dumpy hand.

"I cannot look, little one, for I am blind."

"Ot's blind?"

"Having eyes that cannot see, sweetheart."

"Oh."

"But _your_ eyes _can_ see, and if you are to be _my_ little boy, my
little Michael, your eyes shall see for my eyes also, and you shall
come to me every day, and tell me when the sun is shining, and the
sky is blue, and then we will go out together and listen for the
birds that will be singing."

"Dat's nice," said the little fellow, looking down at the pebble in
his palm, and just then the priest came into the house out of the
snow.

"How comes it that this sweet little man and I have never met
before?" said Sunlocks.

"You might live ten years in an Iceland house and never see the
children of its servants," said the priest.

"I've heard his silvery voice, though," said Sunlocks. "What is the
color of his eyes?"

"Blue," said the priest.

"Then his hair--this long curly hair--it must be of the color of the
sun?" said Sunlocks.

"Flaxen," said the priest.

"Run along to your mother, sweetheart, run," said Sunlocks, and,
dropping back in his seat, he murmured, "How easily he might have
been my son indeed."

Kneeling on both knees, her hot face turned down and her parted lips
quivering, Greeba had listened to all this with the old delicious
trembling at both sides her heart. And going back to her own room,
she caught sight of herself in the glass, and saw that her eyes were
dancing like diamonds and all her cheeks a rosy red. Life, and a
gleam of sunshine, seemed to have shot into her face in an instant,
and while she looked there came over her a creeping thrill of
delight, for she knew that she was beautiful. And because _he_ loved
beauty whose love was everything to her, she cried for joy, and
picked up her boy, where he stood tugging at her gown, and kissed him
rapturously.

The little man, with proper manly indifference to such endearments,
wriggled back to the ground, and