women neighbors took no part in all these doings, and gave it out loudly that the child was being spoiled. She went, with other boys and girls, to a small dame-school on the other side of Bowdoin Square; for Jamie would not hear of a public school. Here she learned quickly to read, write, and do a little embroidering, and gained much knowledge of human nature.
One thing that they would not allow the child was her outlandish name: Mercy she was called,—Mercy McMurtagh. Perhaps we may venture still to call her Mercedes. The child's hair and eyes were getting darker, but it was easy to see she would be a blonde d'Espagne. Jamie secretly believed she had a strain of noble blood, though openly he would not have granted such a thing's existence. We, with our wider racial knowledge, might have recognized points that came from Gothic Spain,—the deep eyes of starlight blue, so near to black, and hair that was a brown with dust of gold. But her feet and hands were all of Andalusia. Jamie had hardly spoken to a woman in his life,—he used to think of himself as deformed. And now this little girl was all his own!
