A Bookful Of Girls Part 4

"She makes friends easily," Mr. Grey remarked, later in the morning, as he and Blythe paused a moment in their game of ring-toss. The child was standing, clinging to the hand of a tall woman in black, a grave, silent Southerner who had hitherto kept quite to herself.

"Yes," Blythe rejoined, "but she is fastidious. She will listen to no blandishments from any one whom she doesn't take a fancy to. That good-natured, talkative Mr. Distel has been trying all day to get her to come to him, but she always gives him the slip." And Blythe, in her preoccupation, proceeded to throw two rings out of three wide of the mark.

"Has the Count taken any more notice of her?" Mr. Grey inquired, deftly tossing the smallest of all the rings over the top of the post.

"Apparently not; but she takes a great deal of notice of him. See, she's watching him now. I should not be a bit surprised if she were to speak to him of her own accord one of these days."

"There are not many days left," her companion remarked. "The Captain says we shall make Cape St. Vincent before night."

"Oh, how fast the voyage is going!" Blythe sighed.

Yet, sorry as she would be to have the voyage over, no one was more enchanted than Blythe when Cape St. Vincent rose out of the sea, marking the end of the Atlantic pa.s.sage. It was just at sundown, and the beautiful headland, bathed in a golden light, stood, like the mystic battlements of a veritable "Castle in Spain," against a luminous sky.

"Mamma," Blythe asked, "did you ever see anything more beautiful than that?"

They were standing at the port railing, with the little girl between them, watching the great cliffs across the deep blue sea.

"Nothing more beautiful than that seen through your eyes, Blythe."

"I believe you do see it through my eyes, Mumsey," Blythe answered, thoughtfully, "just as I am getting to see things through Cecilia's eyes. I never realised before how things open up when you look at them that way."

And Mrs. Halliday smiled a quiet, inward smile that Blythe understood with a new understanding.

They took little Cecilia ash.o.r.e with them at Gibraltar the next morning, and again Blythe experienced the truth of her new theory.

It was our heroine's first glimpse of Europe, and no delectable detail of their hour's drive, no exotic bloom, no strange Moorish costume, no enchanting vista of cliff or sea, was lost upon her. Yet she felt that even her enthusiasm paled before the deep, speechless ecstasy of the little Cecilia. It was as if, in the tropical glow and fragrant warmth, the child were breathing her native air,--as if she had come to her own.

On their return, as the grimy old tug which had carried them across the harbour came alongside the big steamer, the child suddenly exclaimed, "_Ecco, il Signore!_" and, following the direction of her gesture, their eyes met those of the Count looking down upon them. He instantly moved away, and they had soon forgotten him, in the pleasurable excitement of bestowing upon Giuditta the huge, hat-shaped basket filled with fruit which they had brought for her.

Later in the day, as they weighed anchor and sailed out from the shadow of the great Rock, Blythe found herself standing with Mr. Grey at the stern-rail of their own deck, watching the face of the mighty cliff as it changed with the varying perspective.

"Oh! I wish I were a poet or an artist or something!" she cried.

"Would you take that monstrous fortress for a subject?" he asked.

"Yes, and I should do something so splendid with it that n.o.body would dare to be satirical!" and she glanced defiantly at her companion, whose good-humoured countenance was wrinkling with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Let us see," he said. "How would this do?" And he gravely repeated the following:

"There once was a fortress named Gib, Whose manners were haughty and--

What rhymes with Gib?"

"Glib!" Blythe cried.

"Good!

Whose manners were haughty and glib.

If you tried to get in, She replied with a grin,--

Quick! Give me another rhyme for Gib."

"Rib!" Blythe suggested, audaciously.

"Excellent, excellent! Rib! Now, how does it go?

There once was a fortress named Gib, Whose manners were haughty and glib!

If you tried to get in, She replied, with a grin, 'I'm Great Britain's impregnable rib!'

Rather neat! Don't you think?"

"O Mr. Grey!" Blythe cried. "You've got to write that in my voyage-book! It's the----"

At that moment, a gesture from her companion caused her to turn and look behind her. There, only a few feet from where they were standing, but with his back to them, was the Count, sitting on one of the long, stationary benches fastened against the hatchway, while just at his knees stood little Cecilia. She was balancing herself with some difficulty on the gently swaying deck, holding out for his acceptance a small bunch of violets, which one of the market-women at Gibraltar had bestowed upon her.

As he appeared to hesitate: "_Prendili!_" she cried, with pretty wilfulness. Upon which he took the little offering, and lifted it to his face.

The child stood her ground resolutely, and presently, "Put me up!" she commanded, still in her own sweet tongue.

Obediently he lifted her, and placed her beside him on the seat, where she sat clinging with one little hand to the sleeve of his coat to keep from slipping down, with the gentle dip of the vessel.

The two sat, for a few minutes, quite silent, gazing off toward the African coast, and Blythe and her companion drew nearer, filled with curiosity as to the outcome of the interview.

Presently the child looked up into the Count's face and inquired, with the pretty Tuscan accent which sounded like an echo of his own question on the evening of the dance:

"What is thy name?"

"Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia."

Cecilia repeated after him the long, musical name, without missing a syllable, and with a certain approving inflection which evidently had an ingratiating effect upon the many-syllabled aristocrat; for he lifted his carefully gloved hand and pa.s.sed it gently over the little head.

The child took the caress very naturally, and when, presently, the hand returned to the knee, she got possession of it, and began crossing the kid fingers one over the other, quite undisturbed by the fact that they invariably fell apart again as soon as she loosed her hold.

At this juncture the two eavesdroppers moved discreetly away, and Blythe, leaving her fellow-conspirator far behind, flew to her mother's side, crying:

"O Mumsey! She's simply winding him round her finger, and there's nothing he won't be ready to do for us now!"

"Yes, dear; I'm delighted to hear it," Mrs. Halliday replied, with what Blythe was wont to call her "benignant and amused" expression.

"And after a while you will tell me what you are talking about!"

But Blythe, nothing daunted, only appealed to Mr. Grey, who had just caught up with her.

"You agree with me, Mr. Grey; don't you?" she insisted.

"Perfectly, and in every particular. Mrs. Halliday, your daughter and I have been eavesdropping, and we have come to confess."

Whereupon Blythe dropped upon the foot of her mother's chair, Mr. Grey established himself in the chair adjoining, and they gave their somewhat bewildered auditor the benefit of a few facts.

"I really believe," the Englishman remarked, in conclusion,--"I really believe that haughty old dago can help us if anybody can. And when your engaging young protegee has completed her conquest,--to-morrow, it may be, or the day after, for she's making quick work of it,--we'll see what can be done with him."