“You’re not going away, are you, Miss
Humf’ay?” implored Angela.
Mrs. Chater shrilled: “Children, come away.
Come here at once.”
Mary dropped one knee upon the mat; caught her arms
about the children. She pressed a cool face against
each side her wet and burning countenance, gave kisses,
and upon the added stress of this new emotion choked:
“Good-bye, little ducklings!”
“Oh, darling, darling Miss Humf’ay,
we will be good if you’ll stay!”
They felt this was the desperate threat that so often
followed their misdemeanours put into action.
She held them, hugging them. “It isn’t
that. You have been good.”
“Then you said you would stay for ever and ever
if we were good.”
“Not ever and ever; I said—I said
perhaps a fairy prince would come to take me.
Didn’t I?”
This was the romance that forbade tears. But
David had doubts. He regarded the hansom at the
door: “That’s a cab, not a carriage.
Fairy princes don’t come in cabs.”
“The prince is waiting. Kiss me, darling
Davie. Angie, dear, dear Angle, kiss me.”
She rose. Mrs. Chater had come from the stairs,
now laid hands upon the small people and dragged them
back from the pretty figure about which they clung.
They screamed, “Let me go!”
David roared; dropped prone upon the mat to kick and
howl: “Take away your hand, mother!”
Angela gasped: “Oh, comeback, comeback,
darling Miss Humf’ay!”
With a glare of defiance into Mrs. Chater’s
stormy eyes, my Mary stooped over David.
“David!” The calm ring of the tones he
had learned to obey checked his clamour, his plunging
kicks. She stooped; kissed him. “Be
good as gold,” she commanded. “Promise.”
“Good as gold—yes—p’omise,”
David choked.
Angela was given, and gave, the magic formula.
Mary stepped back. Susan slammed the door.
With quivering lips my Mary walked to the cab.
“Drive down the street,” she choked; lay
back against the cushions; gave herself to shaking
sobs.
Her George met her a very few yards down the street.
He gave an order to the cabman and sat beside her.
It was not long before her grief was hushed.
She dried her eyes; nestled against this wonderful
fellow who, as love had now constituted her world,
was the solace against every trouble that could come
to her, the shield against any power that might arise
to do her hurt.
They debated the position and found it desperate;
discussed the immediate future to discover it threatening.
Yet the gloom was irradiated by the glowing light
of the prospective future; the rumbling of present
fears was lost in the tinkling music of their voices,
striking notes from love.
The cab twisted this way and that; clattered over
Battersea Bridge, down the Park, to the right past
the Free Library, and so into Meath Street and to
the clean little house of the landlady whom George
knew.
