His shining hair rumpled
thickly about his face as he leaned anxiously toward Cummins; and
Cummins, in turn, stared down in dumb perplexity upon the joyful
kickings and wrigglings of the growing problem.
"Ees she not ceevilize?" demanded Jan ecstatically, bending his black
head over her. "Ah, ze sweet Melisse!"
"Yes, she must be like HER, Jan--just as good and just as sweet and
just as beautiful," interrupted Cummins gently.
There was a quick intaking of his breath as he hobbled back to his own
cot, leaving Jan at play with the baby.
That night, in the dim, sputtering glow of an oil-lamp, John Cummins
and Jan Thoreau solemnly set to work to thrash out the great problem
that had suddenly entered into their existence. To these two there was
no element of humor in what they were doing, for into their keeping
had been given a thing for which God had not schemed them. The woman,
had she been there, would have laughed at them, and in a dozen gentle
breaths might have told them all that the world held in secret between
mother and child; but, leaving them, she had passed on to them
something that was life, like herself, and yet mystery.
Had fate given Maballa to Melisse for a mother there would have been
no mystery. She would have developed as naturally as a wolf-whelp or a
lynx-kitten, a savage breath of life in a savage world, waxing fat in
snow-baths, arrow-straight in papoose-slings, a moving, natural thing
in a desolation to which generations and centuries of forebears had
given it birthright.
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