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Certainly, they looked as beautiful as the angels on the clouds, and to Tessa's mind they too had a background of cloud, like everything else that came to her in life. How and whence did they come? She did not mind much about knowing. But one thing surprised her as newer than wreaths and crosses; it was that some of the white figures carried baskets between them. What could the baskets be for?
The altar-like table, with its gorgeous cloth, the row of tapers, the sham episcopal costume, the surpliced attendant, and even the movements of the mitred figure, as he alternately bent his head and then raised something before the lights, were a sufficiently near parody of sacred things to rouse poor little Tessa's veneration; and there was some additional awe produced by the mystery of their apparition in this spot, for when she had seen an altar in the street before, it had been on Corpus Christi Day, and there had been a procession to account for it.
Tessa's dark eyes danced with fun as she walked backwards from Harvey, and leaning against the thatched side of the house, put her finger to her lips. "What a beautiful sensible man he is, isn't he, Harvey?"
Peter taking care of Missy sahib." And, with glassy eyes fixed and white lips rigid, Tessa's strained whisper came in answer. "O Lord, don't let it bite me!" Tommy would have flung himself forward then, but Bernard caught and held him. He had seen the look in the Indian's eyes, and he knew beyond all doubting that Tessa was safe, if any human power could make her so. Stella knew it also.
Tessa, however, by this time had also warmed to the game. She paid no more attention to her mother's order than she would have paid to the buzzing of a mosquito. And when Scooter dived under the sofa on which Netta had been reclining, she burrowed after him with a squeal of merriment. It was too much for Netta whose feelings had been decidedly ruffled before Tessa's entrance.
But she did occasionally as a great treat have her to sleep with her, generally when Tessa's looks proclaimed her to be in urgent need of a long night. For she was almost always late to bed when at home, refusing to retire before her mother, though there was little of companionship between them at any time.
He stooped over Tessa with a few kindly words, but when he saw the child's face his own changed somewhat. "This won't do," he said to Bernard, holding the slender wrist. "We must get her to bed. Where's her ayah?" Tessa's little hand hung limply in his hold. She seemed to be half-asleep. Yet when Bernard moved to lift her, she roused herself to cling around his neck.
The conjuror a man with one of those faces in which the angles of the eyes and eyebrows, of the nostrils, mouth, and sharply-defined jaw, all tend upward showed his small regular teeth in an impish but not ill-natured grin, as he let go Tessa's hands, and stretched out his own backward, shrugging his shoulders, and bending them forward a little in a half-apologetic, half-protesting manner.
She bestirred herself, and in a few moments a large cup of fragrant milk was held out to him; and by the time he set the cup down she had brought bread from a bag which hung by the side of the mule, and shyly and mutely insisted on his taking it, even though he told her he had nothing to pay her with; and just as he was leaning down to kiss her he was harshly interrupted by Monna Ghita, Tessa's mother, who had come upon them unobserved.
Chard, whose dark face was deeply flushed, sat down at the table, lit a cigar, and watched his villainous accomplice place the two cups of coffee with some biscuits on a tray, take it to Miss Remington's door and knock. "Coffee, ma'am." "Thank you, steward," he heard Tessa's soft voice reply as Maoni opened the door and took the tray from Jessop.
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