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"Shall I tell you a story?" she then said in a mild fit of desperation, for story-telling was as little in her way as anything else. "Yes, yes, tell me a story!" Fina clapped her chubby hands together and climbed up into Leam's lap. "What shall it be about bears or tigers, or what?" asked Leam dutifully. "Tell me about mamma, my own mamma, not Aunty Birkett," said Fina.
Fina was the natural charge of universal womanhood, and no one who was a woman at all could fail to be interested in such a pretty, caressing little creature.
What there was of sterling in Leam had no charm for, because no point of contact with, Fina. Thus, all her efforts went astray, and the child loved her no better for being coaxed by methods that did not amuse her. At the end of all she still said with her pretty pout that Leam was cross she would not talk to her about mamma. One day Learn took Fina for a walk to the Broad.
"Leam is at home making music," said Fina disdainfully. She had caught the displeased accent of her adopted father, and echoed it. "Does she make much music?" asked Edgar with his hand under her chin, turning up her face. The child shrugged her little shoulders. "She makes a noise," she said; and those who heard her laughed.
She was alone, driving her gray ponies in the basket phaeton, and saw the child struggling in the stream, with Learn standing silent, helpless, struck to stone as it seemed, watching her without making an effort to save her. "Leam! Fina! save her! save her!" cried Josephine, who herself had enough to do to hold her ponies, in their turn startled by her own sudden cries.
They were very small and insignificant little lessons, for Leam had a fellow-feeling for the troubles of ignorance, and laid but a light hand on the frothy mind inside that curly head. When they were finished the little one said coaxingly, "Now play with me, Leam! You never play with me." "What can I do, Fina?" poor Leam replied.
"I have always taken care of Fina," she said in a humbled voice, as if it was a plea for pardon that she was putting forward. "You pushed me in, and you did it on purpose," repeated Fina; and Mr. Dundas was shocked at himself to find that he speculated for a moment on the amount of truth there might be in the child's statement. Cold, trembling, distressed, Leam turned away.
She came through the open window and ran up to him. "Nice papa!" she lisped, stroking his hand. He took her on his knee, "I have I given you a new mamma, Fina," he said, kissing her; and then he kissed Josephine for emphasis. "Will you be good to her and love her very much? This is your mamma.".
Fina was on her stepfather's knee, caressing his hand and Josephine's, which were clasped together on her little lap, while his other arm encircled the substantial waist of his promised bride, whose disengaged hand rested on his shoulder. "Leam," said the father, "I have given you " He stopped. The name which he was about to utter, with all its passionate memories, was left unsaid.
The walk was pleasant enough, Leam was not called on to rack her brains those non-inventive brains of hers, which could not imagine things that never happened for stories wherewith to while away the time, as Fina ran alone, happy in picking the spring flowers growing thick on the banks and hedgerows.
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