He was painfully
conscious that he had signally failed in his attempts to teach her, and
he was the only teacher she had ever had.
In this little, unkempt, sun-bleached herd-boy there dwelt a very
tender, chivalrous heart, and on his little sister Jean all his wealth,
of affection had as yet been bestowed. Never did faithful knight serve
his lady-love more devotedly than Geordie had this little brown maiden,
since her earliest babyhood.
They were orphans, and ever since they could remember their home had
been with their grandmother, a frail, dreamy old woman, so deaf that the
most active and varied gesticulation was the only means of conveying to
her the remotest idea of what one wished to say. Geordie, indeed, was
the only person sufficiently careless of his lungs to attempt the medium
of speech, and then his conversation was pitched in the same key as when
he performed his herding functions.
To the little Jean, Geordie had been playmate and protector in one, her
absolute slave from the time she sat on her old grandmother's knee, and,
tiring of that position, lisped out, "Deordie, Deordie," holding out her
little brown hands so that he might take her, and then they would sit
together on the earthen floor of the cottage, and the gipsy locks would
intermingle with Geordie's flaxen hair, which yielded meekly to as rough
treatment from the little brown fingers as ever hapless terrier of the
nursery was called on to undergo.
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