“Quit takin’ on so, girlie,” he said, choking back a lump; “why, we’ll all love ye ten times more fer all this, an’ ez fer bein’ a nobody, ye’re a blessed angel to us fer bringin’ the news ye hev.” And then he kissed her, while Aunt Mandy wiped her eyes on her apron.
The shower, violent for a moment, was soon over; for as Chip raised her wet eyes, a sunshiny smile illumined Uncle Jud’s face.
“If Cyrus is alive,” he said, “as ye callate, I’ll thank God till I set eyes on him, and then I think I’ll lick him fer not huntin’ me up all these years.”
“But mebbe he found Abby was married ’n’ didn’t want to,” interposed Aunt Mandy. “We mustn’t judge him yet.”
“No, I won’t judge him,” asserted Uncle Jud; “I’ll jest cuff him, good ’n’ hard, an’ let it go at that.
“Ez fer you, girlie, an’ jest to set yer mind at rest, we found out what your right name was and where ye run away from last fall, but never let on to nobody. ’Twas your business and nobody else’s, an’ made no difference in our feelin’s, ez ye must see; an’ now I’ll tell ye how I found out.
“I was down to the Corners one day arter ye went to Christmas Cove, ’n’ a feller–nice-lookin’ feller, too, with honest brown eyes–was askin’ if anybody had seen or heard o’ a runaway girl by the name o’ McGuire. Said she’d run away from Greenvale–’That’s ’bout a hundred miles from here,’ he said–an’ he was huntin’ for her. Nobody at the Corners knew about ye ’n’ I kept still, believin’ ye had reason fer not wantin’ to be found out.”
And now another tide–the thrill of love–surged in Chip’s heart, and her face became glorified.
And so the clouds rolled away. That night Chip wrote a brief but curious letter, so odd, in fact, it must be quoted verbatim:–