"Oh, that you were all right, Mrs. Dennison."
"Thanks. Has he seen Mr. Loring?"
"No; but he knew he had come here. He told me so."
"Well, I needn't take you right up, need I?"
Semingham thought of some jest about not intruding on the sacred scene, but the jest did not come. Somehow he shrank from it. Mrs. Dennison did not.
"We shall want to fall on one another's necks," said she, smiling. "And you'd feel in the way. You hate honest emotions, you know."
He nodded, lifted his hat, and turned. On his way down alone, he stopped once for a moment and exclaimed,
"Good heavens! And I believe she'd rather meet the devil himself. She is a woman!"
Mrs. Dennison pursued her way at a gentler pace. Before she came in sight, she heard her children's delighted chatterings, and, a moment later, Harry's hearty tones. His voice brought to her, in fullest force, the thing that was always with her—with her as the cloak that a man hath upon him, and as the girdle that he is always girded withal.
When the children saw her, they ran to her, seizing her hands and dragging her towards Harry. A little way off stood Marjory Valentine, with a nervous smile on her lips. Harry himself stood waiting, and Mrs. Dennison walked up to him and kissed him. Not till that was done did she speak or look him in the face. He returned her kiss, and then, talking rapidly, she made him sit down, and sat herself, and took her little boy on her knee. And she called Marjory, telling her jokingly that she was one of the family.