As I turned to look at the group from which I heard this news item issuing, my glance met Julian Mastakovich`s. He stood listening to the insipid chatter in an attitude of concentrated attention, with his hands behind his back and his head inclined to one side.
All the while I was quite lost in admiration of the shrewdness our host displayed in the dispensing of the gifts. The little maid of the many- rubled dowry received the handsomest doll, and the rest of the gilts were graded in value according to the diminishing scale of the parents`
stations in life.
The last child, a tiny chap of ten, thin, red-haired, freckled, came into possession of a small book of nature stories without illustrations or even head and tail pieces. He was the governess`s child. She was a poor widow, and her little boy, clad in a sorry-looking little nankeen jacket, looked thoroughly crushed and intimidated. He took the book of nature stories and circled slowly about the children`s toys. He would have given anything to play with them. But he did not dare to. You could tell he already knew his place.
Watch Individuality
I like to observe children. It is fascinating to watch the individuality in them struggling for self-assertion. I could see that the other children`s things had tremendous charm for the red-haired boy, especially a toy theater, in which he was so anxious to take a part that he resolved to fawn upon the other children. He smiled and began to play with them. His one and only apple he handed over to a puffy urchin whose pockets were already crammed with sweets, and he even carried another youngster pickaback all simply that he might be allowed to stay with the theater.
But in a few moments an impudent young person fell on him and gave him a pummeling. He did not dare even to cry. The governess came and told him to leave off interfering with the other children`s games, and he crept away to the same room the little girl and I were in. She let him sit down beside her, and the two set themselves busily to dressing the expensive doll.
Almost half an hour passed, and I was nearly dozing off, as I sat there in the conservatory half listening to the chatter of the red-haired boy and the dowered beauty, when Julian Mastakovich entered suddenly. He had slipped out of the drawing-room under cover of a noisy scene among the children. From my secluded corner it had not escaped my notice that a few moments before he had been eagerly conversing with the rich girl`s father, to whom he had only just been introduced. He stood still for a while reflecting and mumbling to himself, as if counting something on his fingers.
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