belongs to childish joys and griefs: his face lost its distortion, and was fixed in an open-mouthed gaze at Romola.
“You have lost yourself, little one,” she said, kissing him.
“Never mind! we will find the house again. Perhaps mamma will meet us.”
She divined that he had made his escape at a moment when the mother’s eyes were turned away from him, and thought it likely that he would soon be followed.
“Oh, what a heavy, heavy boy!” she said, trying to lift him.
“I cannot carry you. Come, then, you must toddle back by my side.”
The parted lips remained motionless in awed silence, and one brown fist still clutched the shirt with as much tenacity as ever; but the other yielded itself quite willingly to the wonderful white hand, strong but soft.
“You have a mamma?” said Romola, as they set out, looking down at the boy with a certain yearning. But he was mute. A girl under those circumstances might perhaps have chirped abundantly; not so this square-shouldered little man with the big cloud of curls.
He was awake to the first sign of his whereabout, however. At the turning by the front of San Ambrogio he dragged Romola towards it, looking up at her.
“Ah, that is the way home, is it?” she said, smiling at him. He only thrust his head forward and pulled, as an admonition that they should go faster.
There was still another turning that he had a decided opinion about, and then Romola found herself in a short street leading to open garden ground.