"To be sure she did; I forgot-no, not exactly a message, but this—I was to be sure to give it to you." And out of his miscellaneous receptacle the Cobbler extracted a little book. Vance looked and laughed,—"The Butterflies' Ball and the Grasshoppers' Feast."
Lionel did not share the laugh. He plucked the book to himself, and read on the fly-leaf, in a child's irregular scrawl, blistered, too, with the unmistakable trace of fallen tears, these words:—
Do not Scorn it. I have nothing else I can think of which is All
Mine. Miss Jane Burton gave it me for being Goode. Grandfather
says you are too high for us, and that I shall not see you More; but
I shall never forget how kind you were, never—never. Sophy.
Said the Cobbler, his awl upright in the hand which rested on his knee, "What a plague did the 'Stronomers discover Herschel for? You see, sir," addressing Vance, "things odd and strange all come along o' Herschel."
"What!—Sir John?"
"No, the star he poked out. He's a awful star for females! hates 'em like poison! I suspect he's been worriting hisself into her nativity, for I got out from her the year, month, and day she was born, hour unbeknown, but, calkeiating by noon, Herschel was dead agin her in the Third and Ninth House,—Voyages, Travels, Letters, News, Church Matters, and such like. But it will all come right after he's transited. Her Jupiter must be good. But I only hope," added the Cobbler, solemnly, "that they won't go a-discovering any more stars. The world did a deal better without the new one, and they do talk of a Neptune—as bad as Saturn!"
"And this is the last of her!" said Lionel, sadly, putting the book into his breast-pocket. "Heaven shield her wherever she goes!"
VANCE.—"Don't you think Waife and the poor little girl will come back again?"
COBBLER.—"P'raps; I know he was looking hard into the county map at the stationer's over the way; that seems as if he did not mean to go very far. P'raps he may come back."
VANCE.—"Did he take all his goods with him?"