And for some years thereafter no difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes could see.

They ate together, they walked abroad together, they played together, they slept together, and the little black head of the boy lay with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.
Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles of humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them.

First, on Ali's part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi, "Come!" she did not hear, when he asked "Why ?" she did not answer; and when he said "Look!" she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed to gaze full into his face.

Then, a sort of amused bewilderment that her little nervous fingers were always touching his arms and his hands, and his neck and his throat.

But long before he had come to know that Naomi was not as he was, that Nature had not given her eyes to see as he saw, and ears to hear as he heard, and a tongue to speak as he spoke, Nature herself had overstepped the barriers that divided her from him.