? ? ? ? The woman came down the path to meet them. The man kissed her, and turning toward Meriem introduced them, speaking in the Arab tongue the girl understood.
? ? ? ? "This is Meriem, my dear," he said, and he told the story of the jungle waif in so far as he knew it.
? ? ? ? Meriem saw that the woman was beautiful. She saw that sweetness and goodness were stamped indelibly upon her countenance. She no longer feared her, and when her brief story had been narrated and the woman came and put her arms about her and kissed her and called her "poor little darling" something snapped in Meriem's little heart. She buried her face on the bosom of this new friend in whose voice was the mother tone that Meriem had not heard for so many years that she had forgotten its very existence. She buried her face on the kindly bosom and wept as she had not wept before in all her life--tears of relief and joy that she could not fathom.
? ? ? ? And so came Meriem, the savage little Mangani, out of her beloved jungle into the midst of a home of culture and refinement.
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