Later, when he knew more of the world, he would change the 'y' into
'ie,' but now she was simply Jerry, and when he called her that she
laughed and nodded as if the sound were not new to her. She was a
beautiful child, with complexion as pure as wax, and eyes which might
have borrowed their color from the blue lakes of Italy, or from the
skies of England when they are at their brightest.

'I wish she could talk to me. I suppose she must speak French,' he said,
as he was trying in vain to make her understand him. 'Don't you know a
word I say?' he asked her, and her reply was what sounded to him like
'We, we.'

'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: