Indeed, on various pretences, they all withdrew one after another, save Dolly, who was left sitting there alone. It was a great relief to be alone, and she was crying to her heart’s content, when she heard Joe’s voice at the end of the passage, bidding somebody good night.
Good night! Then he was going elsewhere—to some distance, perhaps. To what kind of home COULD he be going, now that it was so late!
She heard him walk along the passage, and pass the door. But there was a hesitation in his footsteps. He turned back—Dolly’s heart beat high—he looked in.
‘Good night!’—he didn’t say Dolly, but there was comfort in his not saying Miss Varden.
‘Good night!’ sobbed Dolly.
‘I am sorry you take on so much, for what is past and gone,’ said Joe kindly. ‘Don’t. I can’t bear to see you do it. Think of it no longer. You are safe and happy now.’
Dolly cried the more.
‘You must have suffered very much within these few days—and yet you’re not changed, unless it’s for the better. They said you were, but I don’t see it. You were—you were always very beautiful,’ said Joe, ‘but you are more beautiful than ever, now. You are indeed. There can be no harm in my saying so, for you must know it. You are told so very often, I am sure.’
As a general principle, Dolly DID know it, and WAS told so, very often. But the coachmaker had turned out, years ago, to be a special donkey; and whether she had been afraid of making similar discoveries in others, or had grown by dint of long custom to be careless of compliments generally, certain it is that although she cried so much, she was better pleased to be told so now, than ever she had been in all her life.
‘I shall bless your name,’ sobbed the locksmith’s little daughter, ‘as long as I live. I shall never hear it spoken without feeling as if my heart would burst. I shall remember it in my prayers, every night and morning till I die!’