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_ "SURE an' it's time they was a-coomin'," said Mrs. Ginniss going out
upon the door-stone, and shading her eyes from the level rays of the
sunset as she looked steadfastly down the road.
"An' who'll they all be, I'm woondherin'? The missus says fove bids
was wanted; an' faith it's well she said no more, for sorra a place
'ud there be to stand anudder in. An' tay ready for eight folks, at
sax o'clock. That's it, I belave; though all thim figgers is enough
to craze me poor head."
She took a little note from her pocket as she spoke, and, unfolding
it, looked anxiously at the delicate letters.
"Sure an' it's all there if on'y I had the sinse to rade it. An'
feth, it's the tail uv it I'm howldin' to the top, as I'm a sinner!
No' thin: it looks as crabbed this way as that. I'd niver be afther
makin' it out if it towld of a fortin coomin' to me for the axin'.
Shusin, Shusin, I say!"
"What is it, Mrs. Ginniss?" asked a pleasant voice from within; and
Susan, looking a little thinner and paler than when we first met
her, came out of the parlor, where she had been picking a few
scattered petals from beneath the vases of flowers upon the
mantle-shelf.
"An' would ye be plazed to read the missus's note to me wonst more?
Me owld eyes are that dim, I can't make it out in the gloamin'."
Susan, with unshaken gravity, took the note, turned it right side
up, and read aloud, while her companion craftily glanced over her
shoulder to note the position of the words as they were spoken:--
"DEAR MRS. GINNISS,--
"We shall be at home on Wednesday evening, at six o'clock, and shall
bring some guests. You will please prepare tea for eight persons;
and make up five beds, three of them single ones. Tell Susan to make
the house look as pretty as she can; and send for any thing she or
you need in the way of preparation. "F. LEGRANGE"
"An' faith it's this minute they're coomin!' Look at the
jaantin'-cars fur down the road!"
"One's a carryall, and the other's a rockaway," said Susan
sententiously.
"Musha, an' what's the odds if they're one thing or the other, so
they bring the purty misthress back halesomer than she wint? That's
her in the first car: I know her white bonnet with the blue ribbon."
"Yes, there's Mr. and Mrs. Legrange, and a strange lady and
gentleman; and the other carriage are all strangers, except Mr.
Burroughs. Those young ladies are pretty; ain't they?"
But Mrs. Ginniss was already at the gate, courtesying and beaming:--
"Ye're wilcoom home, missus and masther; an' it's in health an' pace
I hope yees coom."
"Thank you, Mrs. Ginniss. We are very well indeed, I believe," said
Mr. Legrange, rather nervously, as he jumped from the carriage and
helped out his wife, and then Kitty and Mr. Brown. From the other
carriage, meantime, had alighted, without the good woman's
observation, Mr. Burroughs, Dora, Karl, and another, who, the moment
her feet touched the ground, ran forward, crying,--
"O mamma! I've been at this home before."
At the sound, Mrs. Ginniss turned, dropping the shawls, bags, and
parasols she held, in one mass at her feet, and then dropping
herself upon her knees in their midst; while her fresh face turned
of a ghastly yellow, and her uplifted hands shook visibly,--
"Glory be to God, an' what's that!" exclaimed she in a voice of
terror.
"Oh, it's mammy, it's mammy! that used to rock me in her lap, and
hold my feet, and sing to me! I 'member her now, and Teddy said so
too. O mammy! I'm so glad you've come again!"
The sobbing woman opened wide her arms; and Sunshine leaped into
them, shouting again and again,--
"It's the good old mammy! and I'm so glad, I'm so glad!"
"O Mrs. Legrange! is it?" exclaimed an agitated voice; and Mrs.
Legrange, turning, found Susan standing beside her with pale face
and clasped hands, her eyes fixed upon the child with a sort of
terror.
"Yes, Susan, it is 'Toinette, her very self. I would not write,
because I wanted to see if she would know you both, and you her."
"Oh, thank God! thank God! I didn't believe I'd ever forgive myself
for not minding her better; but now I may. Miss 'Toinette, dear,
won't you speak to Susan?"
"Susan!" exclaimed the child, struggling out of Mrs. Ginniss's
embrace, and leaving that good woman still exploding in a
feu-de-joie of thanksgiving, emotion, and astonishment. "Are you
Susan? Why, that was a doll!"
"A doll?" asked the nurse in bewilderment, and pausing in act of
kissing her recovered charge, not with the rapturous abandonment of
the Irish woman, but with the respectful tenderness of a trained
English servant.
"She named a doll after you, Mrs. Ginniss says, although she did not
remember who you really were," explained Mrs. Legrange. "But come,
my friends: we will not wait longer out of doors. Dora, you and
Kitty know the way even better than I; and Mr. Windsor"--
"It isn't Mr. Windsor, it's Karlo, mamma," persisted Sunshine,
dancing up the narrow path in advance of the party.
"Yes, Karl, if you will be so kind," said Dr. Windsor, offering Mrs.
Legrange his arm.
"Then Karl will feel himself as much at home here as he ever did, I
trust," said the lady cordially.
"It was peeping out at that window I saw you first, Dora; and I
thought it must be the sunrise," whispered Tom Burroughs to the lady
he escorted.
"I am sorry I should have so put you out of countenance. Perhaps
that is the reason you never have seen straight since,--so far as I
am concerned at least," replied she.
"One does not care to look straight at the sun: it is sufficient to
bask in its light," whispered the lover.
"Oh! very well, if that is what you want--Here, Sunshine! Cousin Tom
wants you."
The little girl came bounding toward them; and Dora, with a wicked
little laugh, slipped away, and up the stairs, to the room that had
been Kitty's, now appropriated to the use of the two young girls.
Soon the happy party assembled again in the kitchen, where stood a
tea-table judiciously combining the generous breadth of Mrs.
Ginniss's ideas with the more elegant and subdued tastes inculcated
upon Susan by a long period of service with her present mistress.
"Mind you tell 'em there's more beyant, on'y you wouldn't set it on
all to wonst," whispered the Irish woman hoarsely, as she rushed
into the scullery, leaving Susan to receive the guests just entering
the kitchen.
"Mrs. Ginniss thought we should arrive with appetites, I suspect,"
said the hostess, laughing a little apologetically as they seated
themselves; and Susan did not think it best to deliver her message.
"And so we have, some of us at least; and I do not believe even the
ladies will refuse a bit of this nice tongue, or some cold chicken.
What do you say, Dora?" asked Mr. Legrange gayly.
"No tongue for her, please; she is supplied," remarked Mr. Burroughs
sotto voce; and Dora, with a little mutinous glance, passed her
plate with,--
"A slice of tongue, if you please, Mr. Legrange."
"Never mind: wait a few days, and we will see," murmured Burroughs
threateningly; and Dora did not care to retort, but, blushing
brightly, began an eager conversation with Sunshine, who had nestled
a chair in between those of her mother and Dora, and made lively
claims upon the attention of both.
An hour or two later, Mrs. Legrange went to seek her housekeeper,
and found her seated upon the step of the back door, her hands
clasped around her knees, and softly crooning a wild Irish melody to
herself as she rocked slowly backward and forward, her eyes fixed
upon the little crescent moon, swimming like a silver boat in the
golden sea of sunset.
"An' isn't it a purty sight, you?" asked she, rising as Mrs.
Legrange spoke to her. "Sure an' its the hooney-moon for Misther
Booros an' the swate young lady that's to marry him."
"Yes, it's their honey-moon; and I believe it will be as bright and
as long a one as ever shone," said Mrs. Legrange, smiling tenderly,
as happy wives will do in speaking of the future of a bride.
"I came to ask you to go up stairs with me, Mrs. Ginniss," continued
she with a little agitation in her sweet voice. "There is something
for you to see."
"Sure an' I will, ma'am. Is it the chambers isn't settled to shute
yees?"
"Oh, no! every thing is admirable, except that we must contrive a
little bed for 'Toinette upon the couch in my room."
"An' faith, that's asy done, ma'am. There's lashin's o' blankets an'
sheets an' pillers not in use at all, at all. We've plenty uv ivery
thin' in this house, glory be to God!"
Mrs. Legrange smiled a little at the satisfaction with which the
Irish woman contemplated a superfluity, even when not belonging to
herself; and led the way to her own chamber, where sat Dora, as she
had sat many a time within those four walls, holding Sunshine upon
her lap, and, while loosening her clothes for the night, telling her
one of the stories of which the child was never weary.
"See here, Mrs. Ginniss!" said the mother hastily, as she stripped
the frock from the child's white shoulders, and showed a little
linen bag hung about her neck by a silken cord. "Did you ever see
that before?"
"Sure an' what would ail me owld eyes not to seen it, whin me own
fingers sewed it, an' me own han's hoong it aboot the little
crather's nick?"
"You are quite sure it is the very same?"
"Quite an' intirely; for more by token the clot' is a bit uv the
linen gownd that my mother give me whin I wor married to Michael,
an' the sthring wor to a locket that my b'y give me one Christmas
Day."
"And what is in it?" asked Mrs. Legrange eagerly.
"The bracelet, uv coorse. Whin Teddy brought her to me the black
night he foun' her sinseless in the strate, she had it clinched in
the little hand uv her; an', whin she got betther, there wor nought
she loved so well to have by her, an' tooch, an' look at. So when
she roomed about, an' I wor thinkin' it might be laid asthray, or
she might lave it out the windy, or some place, an' not find it, I
sewed it in the bit bag, an' placed it round her nick, and bid her
niver, niver, niver let it be took off till she coom to her own
agin.
"'That manes hivin, mammy, don't it?' axed the darlint in her own
purty way; an' so I says, 'Yis, that manes hivin; an' don't ye niver
be lettin' man, woman, nor child, be knowin' to it, till ye git to
hivin'.' For sure I knowed she must be some person's child that 'ud
one day give their hearts out uv their buzzums to know for sure that
she wor their own."
"And that is the reason she never would let me look at it, or open
it," said Dora. "She always said, when I asked about it, that it was
to go to heaven with her; and, when she got there, she'd open it. So
I supposed it was a charm or relic, such as some of our soldiers
used to carry about their necks; and I never meddled with it."
"And I, although I knew what it must be, wanted to hear Mrs. Ginniss
say that it was the very same bag and all, that she put about the
darling's neck soon after she went to her. But now"--
The quick snip of the scissors finished the sentence, and the bag
lay in Mrs. Legrange's palm. Sunshine's little hand went up rather
forlornly to her bosom, robbed of what it so long had cherished; and
Dora clasped her tighter, and kissed her tenderly: but neither
spoke, until Mrs. Legrange drew from the bag, and held before them,
the coral bracelet, with its linked cameos, broken at one point by
the force with which Mother Winch had torn it from the child's
shoulder, and with the clasp still closed.
Mrs. Legrange opened it, touched the spring, causing the upper plate
to fly up, and silently showed to Dora the name "Antoinette
Legrange" engraved within.
"Not quite two years since it was engraved, and what a life of
sorrow!" said she softly.
Then, going to her jewel-case, she took out the mate, saved as a
sacred relic since the day it had been found upon the floor in the
drawing-room after 'Toinette's flight, and handed it to the child,
saying,--
"Here is the other one, darling; and you may, if you like, give it
to Dora for your wedding-present. This one, that has showed the
wanderings of my poor little lost lamb so long, I shall keep for
myself."
"Will you take it, Dora, and some love, ever so much love, along
with it?" said Sunshine, trying to make her little offering in
somewhat the form she had heard from older people, but finishing
with a sudden clasp of her arms about Dora's neck, and a shower of
kisses, among which came the whispered words,--
"I love you ever and ever so much better than Cousin Tom does, Dora.
Be my little wife, and never mind him; won't you?" _
Read next: CHAPTER XL - THE WEDDING-DAY
Read previous: CHAPTER XXXVIII - WHAT DORA SAID
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