She had left the young man by that time (for it took a few minutes to get me thoroughly well shook together), and the young man was leaning against another of the fir-trees,—­of which there was a cluster,—­with his face upon his arm.  I touched him on the back.  Looking up and seeing me, he says, in our deaf-and-dumb talk, “Do not be angry.”

“I am not angry, good boy.  I am your friend.  Come with me.”

I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, and I went up alone.  She was drying her eyes.

“You have been crying, my dear.”

“Yes, father.”

“Why?”

“A headache.”

“Not a heartache?”

“I said a headache, father.”

“Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that headache.”

She took up the book of my Prescriptions, and held it up with a forced smile; but seeing me keep still and look earnest, she softly laid it down again, and her eyes were very attentive.

“The Prescription is not there, Sophy.”

“Where is it?”

“Here, my dear.”

I brought her young husband in, and I put her hand in his, and my only farther words to both of them were these:  “Doctor Marigold’s last Prescription.  To be taken for life.”  After which I bolted.

When the wedding come off, I mounted a coat (blue, and bright buttons), for the first and last time in all my days, and I give Sophy away with my own hand.  There were only us three and the gentleman who had had charge of her for those two years.  I give the wedding dinner of four in the Library Cart.  Pigeon-pie, a leg of pickled pork, a pair of fowls, and suitable garden stuff.  The best of drinks.  I give them a speech, and the gentleman give us a speech, and all our jokes told, and the whole went off like a sky-rocket.  In the course of the entertainment I explained to Sophy that I should keep the Library Cart as my living-cart when not upon the road, and that I should keep all her books for her just as they stood, till she come back to claim them.  So she went to China with her young husband, and it was a parting sorrowful and heavy, and I got the boy I had another service; and so as of old, when my child and wife were gone, I went plodding along alone, with my whip over my shoulder, at the old horse’s head.

Sophy wrote me many letters, and I wrote her many letters.  About the end of the first year she sent me one in an unsteady hand:  “Dearest father, not a week ago I had a darling little daughter, but I am so well that they let me write these words to you.  Dearest and best father, I hope my child may not be deaf and dumb, but I do not yet know.”  When I wrote back, I hinted the question; but as Sophy never answered that question, I felt it to be a sad one, and I never repeated it.  For a long time our letters were regular, but then they got irregular, through Sophy’s husband being moved to another station, and through my being always on the move.  But we were in one another’s thoughts, I was equally sure, letters or no letters.