“Me, young ladies?” she returned with
surprise. “Hush! Jenny, Jenny!”
The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved.
The sound of the familiar voice seemed to calm her
again. She was quiet once more.
How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief
to look upon the tiny sleeper underneath and seemed
to see a halo shine around the child through Ada’s
drooping hair as her pity bent her head—
how little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief
would come to lie after covering the motionless and
peaceful breast! I only thought that perhaps
the Angel of the child might not be all unconscious
of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate
a hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when
we had taken leave, and left her at the door, by turns
looking, and listening in terror for herself, and
saying in her old soothing manner, “Jenny, Jenny!”
Signs and Tokens
I don’t know how it is I seem to be always writing
about myself. I mean all the time to write about
other people, and I try to think about myself as little
as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself coming
into the story again, I am really vexed and say, “Dear,
dear, you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn’t!”
but it is all of no use. I hope any one who may
read what I write will understand that if these pages
contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose
it must be because I have really something to do with
them and can’t be kept out.
My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised,
and found so much employment for our time that the
winter days flew by us like bright-winged birds.
Generally in the afternoons, and always in the evenings,
Richard gave us his company. Although he was
one of the most restless creatures in the world, he
certainly was very fond of our society.
He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean
it, and I had better say it at once. I had never
seen any young people falling in love before, but
I found them out quite soon. I could not say
so, of course, or show that I knew anything about
it. On the contrary, I was so demure and used
to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered
within myself while I was sitting at work whether I
was not growing quite deceitful.
But there was no help for it. All I had to do
was to be quiet, and I was as quiet as a mouse.
They were as quiet as mice too, so far as any words
were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they
relied more and more upon me as they took more and
more to one another was so charming that I had great
difficulty in not showing how it interested me.
“Our dear little old woman is such a capital
old woman,” Richard would say, coming up to
meet me in the garden early, with his pleasant laugh
and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, “that
I can’t get on without her. Before I begin
my harum-scarum day— grinding away at those
books and instruments and then galloping up hill and
down dale, all the country round, like a highwayman—it
does me so much good to come and have a steady walk
with our comfortable friend, that here I am again!”
