Читать книгу A Son of the Sahara - Louise Gerard - Страница 10

Table of Contents

After some two years out in Gambia, George Barclay returned to England. He returned with a scar across his right cheek.

That scar was the first thing his little daughter remarked upon when the excitement of reunion had died down.

Perched on his knee, she touched it with gentle little fingers and kissed it with soft lips.

"Who has hurt my nice new Daddy?" she asked distressfully.

Then there followed the story of the youthful Sultan Casim Ammeh.

"Oh, what a wicked boy!" she exclaimed.

Then she glanced across at her godfather who was sitting near.

"Isn't he a bad, naughty boy, Grand-godfather, to want to kill my Daddy and sell me as a slave?"

Henry Langham had listened to the story with interest, and very heartily he agreed with her.

"I shall tell Bobby," the little girl went on indignantly, "and he'll go and kill the Sultan Casim Ammeh."

"Who's Bobby?" her father asked.

"My sweetheart. Master Robert Cameron."

"So in my absence I've been cut out, have I?" her father said teasingly. "I'm dreadfully jealous."

But Pansy snuggled closer to him, and her arms went round his neck in a tight hug.

"There'll never be anyone as nice as my Daddy," she whispered.

George Barclay held the tiny girl closer, kissing the golden head.

Often during his months in England, Pansy would scramble on his knee and say:

"Daddy, tell me the story of Casim Ammeh. That naughty boy who hurt your poor face."

To Pansy it was some new Arabian Nights, vastly interesting because her father was one of the principal characters. Although she had heard it quite fifty times, she was ready to hear it quite fifty times more.

"But, my darling, you've heard it scores of times," Barclay said one day.

For all that he told the story again.

Quietly she listened until the end was reached. Then she said:

"I don't like him. Not one little bit. Do you like him, Daddy?"

"To tell you the truth, Pansy, I did like him. He was a very brave boy."

"I shall never like him, because he hurt you," she said firmly, her little flower-like face set and determined.

"Well, my girlie, you're never likely to meet him, so it won't make much difference to him whether you like him or not."

But—in the Book of Fate it was written otherwise.