“Keep still, please. I’m going to tell you now, quickly, before anybody comes.” “Go on then. Speak quietly. I’ll listen.” She realized suddenly that it was kinder and wiser to let him have his way. So she folded her hands in her lap, and sat as still as a stone—no, as still as a rosebush, for the wind rustled her pale green frock, and lifted the tendrils of her brown hair. “Zalie,” he began, his voice at once uncertain yet determined, “I told you, didn’t I, that I knew neither my name nor my kin? I am a waif, but not because I was not loved. That is what is queer and sad about it all. That is what keeps me always looking and hoping that some day—” he broke off and rested for a minute. “I must begin at the beginning,” he recommenced. “I must tell you what I remember. There was a pleasant home, somewhere, with a low window from which I could look down the street if I stood on my toes. There was a father, a mother, and a sister who played with me, and whom I adored. Matey was what I called her. That little name is all I have to remember her by. I cannot even tell you my own last name. I was ‘Little Brother.’ When any of the three said it, I was happy. ‘Little Brother!’ It is the thing I have loved best in all the memories—the way they said that. But father went away. There were darkened windows, a long black box, and all the house was changed. It was as terrible as if the sun had gone out of heaven. I was so lonely and sad it seemed as if I would die, and I remember always clinging to black skirts—sometimes my mother’s, sometimes my Matey’s.” He paused for a moment longer, his dark eyes darkening yet more, and throwing into relief the pallor of his face. Azalea was still immovable, but the look of her face changed. A warm, wild surmise banished something of the anxiety in it and flushed it with excitement. “Then next, I remember the ship. Mother and Matey and I were on it with hundreds and hundreds of others, all crowded together sickeningly. Mother was always in her bed, and Matey and I sat together, creeping out of people’s way, wrapped in an old plaid shawl. I would go to sleep beneath the shawl; and under the shelter of it she told me stories, while the wind flapped it against us. Then there came a day when—when my mother would not answer either Matey or myself. I heard Matey screaming and I screamed with her, and some women were good to us. One kept kissing me, though I didn’t want to be kissed. After that, I saw no more of mother. I know now they must have dropped her in the sea, but of course they told me nothing of that. There were only Matey and me crouching out of the wind beneath that old shawl, Matey crying in my hair and on my face, and trying to laugh and play with me.” He saw the changed look on Azalea’s face and could not quite make it out.