“Do,” said Kenelm.
“William, William,” cried Mrs. Somers; and after a delay long enough to allow him to slip on his jacket, William Somers emerged from the back parlour.
His face had lost its old trace of suffering and ill health; it was still somewhat pale, and retained its expression of intellectual refinement.
“How you have improved in your art!” said Kenelm, heartily.
William started, and recognized Kenelm at once. He sprang forward and took Kenelm’s outstretched hand in both his own, and, in a voice between laughing and crying, exclaimed, “Jessie, Jessie, it is he!—he whom we pray for every night. God bless you! God bless and make you as happy as He permitted you to make me!”
Before this little speech was faltered out, Jessie was by her husband’s side, and she added, in a lower voice, but tremulous with deep feeling, “And me too!”
“By your leave, Will,” said Kenelm, and he saluted Jessie’s white forehead with a kiss that could not have been kindlier or colder if it had been her grandfather’s.
Meanwhile the lady had risen noiselessly and unobserved, and stealing up to Kenelm, looked him full in the face.
“You have another friend here, sir, who has also some cause to thank you—”
“I thought I remembered your voice,” said Kenelm, looking puzzled. “But pardon me if I cannot recall your features. Where have we met before?”