44
LONELY O'MALLEY
Annie Eliza's face twisted, and she showed signs of impending tears, at this sad confession.
"Then the docter, he wrapped me up in a blanket, and he brung me over to maw, an' he put me in the bed next to her, an' he says, 'This lonely little fellow, you 'll have him to look after.' An' maw, she said, 'Poor, lonely little fellow.' An' she says it kind o' stuck, that word, and so she just called me Lonely,[1] right along."
Annie Eliza wiped her eyes, and Lonely, the artist, gloried in his work, seeing it was good. Then he wakened, as from a dream, and testily demanded of himself just why he had stooped to such easy triumphs.
"Can you come an' play with Lionel Clarence and me, sometimes?" Annie Eliza was asking him.
- ↑ This touching and fanciful explanation, I regret to say, is and always was quite destitute of historical foundation, notwithstanding the persistence and feeling with which Lonely repeated it when occasion demanded. "Lonely," indeed, was a boyhood corruption of his mother's patronymic, "Lomely,"—a corruption, however, which had clung and was to cling to Master O'Malley for many years.
