At first he had tried to be deaf to this last request; he had a vague feeling that he dared not take her in his arms.
But the old habit of the past five years was upon him still. He could not endure that the little footsteps should lag painfully, and that the little voice that had been so dear to him should plead in vain.
“Daddie, Daddie,” it cried, “don’t ye ’ear?”
He heard, he heard well enough!
A sob rose in his throat, and he turned away that the child might not see tears on his old cheeks. But he stooped down and lifted her on to his back. And then he could hear her laugh for contentment, and could feel her nestle her head down against his, as she slowly dropped to sleep.
A farmer, driving across that distant marsh-land, met them thus. Months afterwards he told it in the village on the hill.
Two months and more had passed by: where the plain had been at its greenest against a sea—blue beneath the hot sun and east winds of spring—it was golden now with the gold of the harvesting, and brown with the seeds of many grasses that nodded heavy heads in the western breezes.
The cottage on the cliff was sad and quiet.
For the best part of a week after that memorable evening when little Daisy had fallen into the river—it had remained absolutely silent: no smoke had ascended heavenward from its old brick chimney, no voice, either sober or merry, had been heard from out its latticed windows or its orchard-garden.
To the dismay of the neighbours and most of all to the maker of the whole mischief, Tom Wycombe’s house was bolted and barred, and when “the perlice” in the person of one man who had overlooked the village morality for many years, considered it its duty to scale the garden wall and investigate the premises—it was found to be swept and garnished, but deserted.