eBooks Base 2000

I used to
cry dreadfully, when I could get away by myself where Aunt Felicia and
the maids could not see me, cry for my father--he resigned the
Commissionership, you know, when I was sent home and took service in
Afghanistan under the Ameer--and for my darling friend, Mrs. Pereira, and
for the Sultan-i-bagh, where I knew strangers lived now. For the lotus
tank and orange grove, and all my little tame animals and my pretty
play-places I should never, never see any more"--
Overcome by which intimate memories, Damaris' grave voice--which had
taken on a chanting cadence, at once novel and singularly pleasing to the
young man's ear--quavered and broke.
"Poor little exiled princess!" he cried, all his facile kindness to the
fore again. "Yes, it must have been cruelly hard on you. You must have
suffered. No wonder you cried--cried buckets full."
And drawn by pity for that desolate, tropic-bred little child, Tom got on
to his feet and crunched up the loose shingle to the crest of the ridge,
full of a lively desire to pacify and console.


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