“Besides, Catty, they are used to me, and I to them. A new face and a new voice would not bring the same comfort to them.”
“Never, never,” muttered the old woman to herself.
“And I 'll not desert them.”
“That you won't, darling,” said the old woman, kissing her hand passionately, while tears swam in her eyes, and trickled down her cheeks.
“There is but one thought, Catty, that makes me at all faint-hearted about this, and whenever it crosses me I do feel very low and depressed.” She paused, and then murmured the words, “My father!”
“Your father, my darling! What about him?”
“It is thinking, Catty, of his return; an event that ought to be—and would be, too—the very happiest of my life; a day for whose coming I never sleep without a prayer; and yet, even this bright prospect has its dark side, when I recall all my own deficiencies, and how different he will find his daughter from what he had expected her.”
“May the blessed saints grant me patience!” cried Catty, breaking in. “Isn't it too bad to hear you talking this way? Sure, don't I know Master Barry well? Didn't I nurse him, and wasn't I all as one as his own mother to him, and don't I know that you are his own born image? 'Tis himself and no other ye are every minute of the day.”
“And even that, Catty,” said Mary, smiling, “might fail to satisfy him. It is something very different indeed he might have imagined his daughter. I'm sure nobody can be more ignorant than I am, of what a person in my station ought to know. I cannot hide this from myself in my sad moments. I do not try to do so, but I have always relied upon the consolation that, to an existence such as mine is like to be, these deficiencies do not bring the same sense of shame, the same painful consciousness of inferiority, as if I were to mingle with the world of my equals. But if he were to come back,—he, who has seen society in every shape and fashion,—and find me the poor, unlettered, unread, untaught thing I am, unable to follow his very descriptions of far-away lands without confusion and mistake; unable to benefit by his reflections from very want of previous knowledge,—oh, Catty dearest, what a miserable thing is self-love after all, when it should thus thrust itself into the foreground, where very different affections alone should have the place.”
“He 'd love you like his own heart,” said Catty. “Nobody knows him like me; and if there was ever one made for him to dote on, it's your own self.”