The Tenacious Turtle

"Stand still, you Stray, and let me get at the varmint," commanded Jacob
impatiently.

"Let mother get the beast, sonny," Martha pleaded as she knelt on the
grass and caught the dancing boy by his arm and brought his dervish
gyrations to a halt.

I stood unconscious of intrusion and absorbed with interest and watched
the operations begun on the tenacious turtle and the writhing toe.
Neither of the three principals in the action noticed me at all as
Martha held the boy and Jacob bent and took hold of the turtle in his
hard brown spotted shell. And as the operations for his liberation were
begun the small boy became both still and quiet and I was able to get a
good view of him as he leaned against his mother's shoulder and held out
the foot to Jacob.

As I looked at him something queer stirred in me with a sharp pain and
then was quiet. He was the most delicious bit of five-year-old humanity
I had ever beheld and I doubt if any childless woman could have seen
such a child cuddle to another woman's breast and shoulder and not have
had something of the same thrill of pain. His whiteness and pinkness and
sturdy chubbiness were like many another infant's charms but his jet
black top-knot that ascended on one side and cascaded over his ear on
the other in a hauntingly familiar way, his violet eyes under their long
lashes and his clear-cut, firm, commanding mouth, that curled into the
bud of a rose as he sobbed and then unfolded into lines of beauty and
strength as he hushed at his mother's comforting, were not like any
other young human that I had ever beheld.