himself there was a hungry flash of his black eyes.

Lucina held out the gingerbread. "I'd just as lives as not you had
it," said she, timidly. "It's most all there. I've just had three
teenty bites."

Jerome turned on her fiercely. "Don't want your old gingerbread," he
cried. "Ain't hungry--have all I want to home."

The little Lucina jumped, and her blue eyes filled with tears. She
turned away without a word, and ran falteringly, as if she could not
see for tears, across the field; and there was a white lamb trotting
after her. It had appeared from somewhere in the fields, and Jerome
had not noticed it. He remembered hearing that Lucina Merritt had a
cosset lamb that followed her everywhere. "Has everything," he
muttered--"lambs an' everything. Don't want your old gingerbread."

Suddenly he sprang up and began feeling in his pocket; then he ran
like a deer after the little girl. She rolled her frightened, tearful
blue eyes over her shoulder at him, and began to run too, and the
cosset lamb cantered faster at her heels; but Jerome soon gained on
them.

"Stop, can't ye?" he sang out. "Ain't goin' to hurt ye. What ye
'fraid of?" He laid his hand on her green-shawled shoulders, and she
stood panting, her little face looking up at him, half reassured,
half terrified, from her blue silk hood-frills and her curls.

"Like sas'fras?" inquired Jerome, with a lordly air. An emperor about
to bestow a largess upon a slave could have had no more of the very