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Updated: June 1, 2025
The two were fast friends and Stella often left Tessa in his charge while she rested. She was resting now, lying in her own room with a book, when suddenly the sound of Tessa's voice raised in excited welcome reached her. She heard Monck's quiet voice make reply, and started up with every pulse quivering. She had not seen him for nearly six weeks.
If it had not been for that which she had seen in his eyes for those few awful seconds, she would have despised herself for her utter imbecility. But the memory was one which she could not shake from her. She did not wonder that even Peter, proud Sikh as he was, had quailed before that look. Would Monck have accepted even Tessa's appeal if he had not found her watching? She wondered. She wondered.
The opportunity was there, and it raised an inclination which hemmed in the calculating activity of his thought. He started up, and stepped towards the door; but Tessa's cry, as she dropped her beads, roused him from his absorption. He turned and said "My Tessa, get me a lantern; and don't cry, little pigeon, I am not angry."
Tessa's face fell. "That's as bad as telling you to pray for anything, isn't it?" she said to Bernard. "And my prayers never come true. Do yours?" "They always get answered," said Bernard, "some time or other." "Oh, do they?" Tessa regarded him with interest. "Does God come and talk to you then?" she said. He smiled a little. "He speaks to all who wait to hear, my princess," he said.
Tessa's inquisitive eyes followed her. "She's going to cry," she said to Monck. Tommy turned sharply upon his friend with accusation in his glance, but the next instant he summoned Tessa as if she had been a terrier and walked off into the compound with the child capering at his side.
So full of her plan was Tessa that she ran upstairs at once, and asked Tommo if he would take her with him on the morrow. Her friend was delighted, for he thought Tessa's songs very sweet, and was sure she would get money if she tried. 'But see, then, it is cold in the streets; the wind bites, and the snow freezes one's fingers.
Do you know last night when Aunt Stella was lying ill, something happened. An angel came to see her." "An angel!" Tessa's eyes grew round with wonder, and bluer than the bluest bluebell. "What was he like?" she whispered breathlessly. "Did you see him?" "No, I didn't. I think it was a she," Bernard whispered back. "And what do you think she brought? But you'll never guess."
A great temptation had laid hold of Tessa's mind; she would go and take that old man part of her supper, and talk to him a little. He was not deaf like Monna Lisa, and besides she could say a great many things to him that it was no use to shout at Monna Lisa, who knew them already. And he was a stranger strangers came from a long way off and went away again, and lived nowhere in particular.
Of course, he didn't say a word; but it really did seem as if he had answered her question almost as well as a fairy; for, before he had piped a dozen shrill notes, an idea popped into Tessa's head such a truly splendid idea that she clapped her hands and burst out laughing. 'I'll do it! I'll do it! if father will let me, she said to herself, smiling and nodding at the fire.
Like a shadow Peter crossed her line of vision. She heard a murmured, "Missy babal" and rising, she bent forward and saw him in the act of severing Tessa's bond with the bread-knife. It was done in a few hard-breathing seconds. The child was free. Peter turned in triumph, and found Monck standing at the other end of the verandah, looking at him.
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