Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/442

432 I can." She held out her hand, looking up to him with glad tearful eyes. Mr. Langley pressed the hand warmly, as if the thanksgiving look had gone to his heart.

"Nobody need thank me, Heaven knows, except the people of Farley. What would they be without Mr. Mackworth? I believe the rectory is in pretty good repair, and the garden well kept up; but Mr. Mackworth and I must go over it together."

"It is perfect," said Mary, as a vision of the pleasant roomy house and bowery garden rose before her. "Thank you, thank you! You may think I care a great deal about money, but it is not that. It is such pain to see one's own dear people wanting anything, and not to be able to give it to them."

"You will, at all events, be freed from your slavery now, I hope," said Mr. Langley.

Mary looked surprised.

"I have nothing to complain of, though it will be nice to be at home of course, nicer than anything."

"A fine lad your brother is. Does he think of the church?"

"No, he wishes for the army, but lately he has been thinking of going into Mr. Bagshawe's office. He hated the idea, but he wouldn't trouble papa with making difficulties. He is so unselfish," said the sister, proudly. "But there will be no trouble about the army now, thanks to you."

Mr. Langley was touched by this simple girl's great idea of the capabilities of their new income.

"How should I feel?" he thought, "if I were obliged to live on nine hundred a year! Well; this lad's commission may be a means of paying my five hundred pounds."

"You will let me come to-morrow?" he said aloud: "I must see your father, and go over the rectory with him; and I shall see you too, shall I not?"

"Certainly," said Mary; "I don't go back to London until the 20th."

"And then only to say good-bye to it, I hope. A new dance is beginning, will you come?"

As Mary rose, she could not help saying, "I seem to have been talking of nothing but my home concerns."

"You could not have given me greater pleasure," was the answer. "Miss Mackworth, I must say it. Whatever happens hereafter, I shall never forget what I owe to that brown-paper parcel."

At night, when all the guests were gone, Mr. Langley, pacing the deserted conservatory with a cigar, mused much as follows.

"She is too grateful to me—by far too grateful. When she looked up at me with those innocent thankful eyes, I could hardly help speaking then and there: but I must wait till she forgets that I am something of a benefactor, and only remembers me as a friend. Please God, the best friend she will ever have! blessings on the fog, and on the snow, and on the brown-paper parcel, and on the hansom, and on everything else. And blessings on old Lowther, wherever he is now, for going off at the convenient moment! Well, to-morrow I shall see her again—those clear eyes that went straight to my heart in the cold and dark that day; and the sweet smile, and the earnest quiet mouth, worth all her sister's beauty, twenty thousand times! If her heart is not too full of father and mother, and sister and brothers, to leave one corner for me! Well, I must hope and try, and I shall see her again to-morrow."

And at the same hour, Mary, who kept her precious secret for the morrow to disclose, lying wakeful beside her sleeping sister, poured out her earnest thanksgivings for troubles over, and peace beginning.

"How kind he is!" she thought with tears. "How nicely he spoke of Harry! How he listened when I talked so much! How could I talk so much to a stranger? But somehow, I don't feel as if he were a stranger; I feel as if he must belong to us some day. Is that prophetic, I wonder! Is he to be the knight I have always dreamed of, who was to come and carry off my Cilla? May be. And yet, I don't know. There are some people in the world who seem too good for any one even for Cilla."