"Are you goin' to have it then?" he asked.
"I'd rather have it than Annabel," she said, decisively.
"An' I'd rather have it than Gladys Em'ler," he replied.
There was a silence, Ursula looked up.
"Will you really call her Ursula?" she asked.
"Ursula Ruth," replied the man, laughing vainly, as pleased
as if he had found something.
It was now Ursula's turn to be confused.
"It does sound awfully nice," she said. "I must give
her something. And I haven't got anything at all."
She stood in her white dress, wondering, down there in the
barge. The lean man sitting near to her watched her as if she
were a strange being, as if she lit up his face. His eyes smiled
on her, boldly, and yet with exceeding admiration
underneath.
"Could I give her my necklace?" she said.
It was the little necklace made of pieces of amethyst and
topaz and pearl and crystal, strung at intervals on a little
golden chain, which her Uncle Tom had given her. She was very
fond of it. She looked at it lovingly, when she had taken it
from her neck.
"Is it valuable?" the man asked her, curiously.
"I think so," she replied.
"The stones and pearl are real; it is worth three or four
pounds," said Skrebensky from the wharf above. Ursula could tell
he disapproved of her.
"I must give it to your baby--may I?" she said to
the bargee.
He flushed, and looked away into the evening.
"Nay," he said, "it's not for me to say."
"What would your father and mother say?" cried the woman
curiously, from the door.
"It is my own," said Ursula, and she dangled the little
glittering string before the baby. The infant spread its little
fingers. But it could not grasp. Ursula closed the tiny hand
over the jewel. The baby waved the bright ends of the string.
Ursula had given her necklace away. She felt sad. But she did
not want it back.
The jewel swung from the baby's hand and fell in a little
heap on the coal-dusty bottom of the barge. The man groped for
it, with a kind of careful reverence. Ursula noticed the
coarsened, blunted fingers groping at the little jewelled heap.
The skin was red on the back of the hand, the fair hairs
glistened stiffly. It was a thin, sinewy, capable hand
nevertheless, and Ursula liked it. He took up the necklace
carefully, and blew the coal-dust from it, as it lay in the
hollow of his hand. He seemed still and attentive. He held out
his hand with the necklace shining small in its hard, black
hollow.
"Take it back," he said.
Ursula hardened with a kind of radiance.
"No," she said. "It belongs to little Ursula."
And she went to the infant and fastened the necklace round
its warm, soft, weak little neck.