"How shall I count the days, darling! But I shall see you through all my work. It is time for me to go. My undying faithful love for you. My undying faithful love for Dan. And now, put your arms about my neck, and say 'God bless you, and bring you safely back!'"
"God bless you, and bring you safely back, my dear, my heart's treasure!"
Her strength failed her here, and she was sinking to the ground.
"Take her, sir," said Joshua to the Old Sailor, who was standing a little apart. "May Heaven reward you for all your kindness!" He stooped and kissed her once more, and whispering, "I leave my heart behind me," hurried with uneven steps to the boat in waiting for him.
CHAPTER XXIV.
FALSE FRIEND OR TRUE?
"I wish Ellen was at home," said Dan to himself, as he sat alone in the parlor which served as his training-room; "the house is quite lonely without her." Joshua had been gone from Stepney for four days, and, knowing how Dan would miss Ellen, Mrs. Marvel had insisted that he should stop at her house during that time. "There will be no one to attend to you, my dear," Mrs. Marvel had said to him; "Mr. Kindred is ill, and Minnie and Susan are fully employed waiting upon him." Dan acknowledged the superior claims of Mr. Kindred on Minnie's and Susan's attention, and consented to stop at Mrs. Marvel's house until Ellen returned. Now that Joshua was gone, however, he could not help thinking it strange that Minnie had not found time to run in and see him, if only for two or three minutes. He expressed this to Mrs. Marvel, who replied that Mr. Kindred was suffering much, she believed, and did not like Minnie to be away from him, loving her so dearly. "But it will be all right, my dear, when Ellen comes back," she said, "she will be able to assist the girls in their nursing." The uneasiness which Dan would have otherwise experienced at not seeing Minnie was allayed by the knowledge that she was doing her duty. Still he was glad when the morning came upon which Ellen was to return; for patient as he was, he was hungering to see Minnie. And now at last he was at home in his own little parlor, waiting almost impatiently for Ellen. He heard a sound in the passage, and he raised his hand in a listening attitude. "Ellen? No; Susan." The door opened, and Susan entered. Accustomed as he was to Susan's strange manner and to the alterations in it--morose one day and remorsefully affectionate the next--he had never seen her as as he saw her now. Her face was pinched as with some great agony, her hands wandered restlessly about her dress and over one another, her eyes dilated as he remembered them in the old days when she was tormented by the fear that terrible shapes were stealing upon her unaware. Yet, notwithstanding these distressing symptoms of a mind disturbed to its very uttermost, there was something still more painful in her appearance. This was the effort to appear calm and self-possessed, evidenced in the attempts she made to keep her hands still and her eyes from wandering around. But she could not bring color to her white face, nor composure to her quivering lips. No nerves are more difficult to master than those which directly affect the mouth, and many a hard-grained strong-minded man has betrayed himself by a twitching of his lips, which he has found it impossible to control. Dan had not seen Susan for more than a week, and he was appalled at the change in her. His first thought was of Minnie.
"What has happened, Susan?" he cried. "Minnie is not ill?"
He betrayed himself in the tone of anguish in which he made the inquiry. Susan twisted her fingers so tightly together that the blood left them, but she felt no pain.
"Why should Minnie be ill?" she asked. "You have not seen her, then?"