I suppose I must have laughed at that, for the next I heard was:
"Hush! Isn't that Mary!"
"Aw, yes, the poor _veg veen_," said a sad voice. It was Christian
Ann's. At the bottom of her heart I shall always be the child who "sang
carvals to her door."
What a wonderful day! I shall not sleep a wink to-night, though.
To-morrow I must tell him.
* * * * *
JULY 13. I intended to tell Martin this morning, but I really couldn't.
I was going downstairs to breakfast, holding on to the bannisters at one
side and using nurse's shoulder as my other crutch, when I saw the
brightest picture I have ever beheld. Baby and Martin were on hands and
knees on the rag-work hearthrug, face to face--Martin calling her to
come, Isabel lifting up her little head to him, like a fledgling in a
nest, and both laughing with that gurgling sound as of water bubbling
out of a bottle.
This sight broke all the breath out of me at the very first moment. And
when Martin, after putting me into my place in the _chiollagh_, plunged
immediately into a rapturous account of his preparations for our
departure--how we were to be married by special license at the High
Bailiff's on the tenth (if that date would do), how I was to rest a day
and then travel up to London on the twelfth, and then rest other four
days (during which warm clothes could be bought for me), and sail by the
_Orient_ on the sixteenth--I could not find it in my heart to tell him
then of the inexorable fate that confronted us.
Pages:
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086