“O Ailie, that is no word for it! Not only himself, but to find him loving Rose for her father’s sake, undoubting of him through all. Ailie, the thankfulness of it is more than one can bear.”
“And he is the same?” said Alison.
“The same—no, not the same. It is more, better, or I am able to feel it more. It was just like the morrow of the day he walked down the lane with me and gathered honeysuckles, only the night between has been a very, very strange time.”
“I hope the interruption did not come very soon.”
“I thought it was directly, but it could not have been so soon, since you are come home. We had just had time to tell what we most wanted to know, and I know a little more of what he is. I feel as if it were not only Colin again, but ten times Colin. O Ailie, it must be a little bit like the meetings in heaven!”
“I believe it is so with you,” said Alison, scarcely able to keep the tears from her eyes.
“After sometimes not daring to dwell on him, and then only venturing because I thought he must be dead, to have him back again with the same looks, only deeper—to find that he clung to those weeks so long ago, and, above all, that there was not one cloud, one doubt about the troubles—Oh, it is too, too much.”
Ermine lent back with clasped hands. She was like one weary with happiness, and lain to rest in the sense of newly-won peace. She said little more that evening, and if spoken to, seemed like one wakened out of a dream, so that more than once she laughed at herself, begged her sister’s pardon, and said that it seemed to her that she could not hear anything for the one glad voice that rang in her ear, “Colin is come home.” That was sufficient for her, no need for any other sympathy, felt Alison, with another of those pangs crushed down. Then wonder came—whether Ermine could really contemplate the future, or if it were absolutely lost in the present?
Colonel Keith went back to be seized by Conrade and Francis, and walked off to the pony inspection, the two boys, on either side of him, communicating to him the great grievance of living in a poky place like this, where nobody had ever been in the army, nor had a bit of sense, and Aunt Rachel was always bothering, and trying to make mamma think that Con told stories.
“I don’t mind that,” said Conrade, stoutly; “let her try!”