“Ah! but how can I help—” began he.
“It is that you have promised to help. There is nothing to fear. I know that in a way that I can’t explain to you—the knowledge, somehow, is bone of my bone. I must see you with my child in your arms. That is God’s will. And I want nobody to be here except you—not Peggy even. I must tell Peggy, and I hope she won’t think it very selfish or unkind of me. But I don’t want anybody else but you.”
Edith laughed.
“Perhaps we will allow her to stay at Canon Alington’s,” she added.
She stopped, and pointed at a white garden seat that glimmered in the dusk.
“I sat down there that morning and cried,” she said. “I was frightened, I think, at the happiness that was coming to me. Hughie, I could almost sit down there again now and cry. But this time your arms would be round me, and so I could not cry long. Also, I am getting used to happiness. It was a stranger to me then, and—well, happiness is all right when you know it, but you’ve got to know it first.”
Then she turned and faced him, and took both his hands in hers.
CHAPTER XI
CANON ALINGTON had just returned from a ten days’ holiday, which he had spent in yachting in the calm and pleasant waters of the Solent. He had been in extreme health and vigour before he started, but when he came back a week after Hugh and Edith had come down to Mannington again, he felt it had quite set him up. His wife had written to him every day during his absence, giving news of Ambrose and Perpetua, and the sweet peas and had mentioned the arrival of the Graingers. This was à propos of the Literific, as it was now quite generally called by the members of the Society, and Mrs. Grainger, who with her husband had been unanimously elected in the course of the last winter, had promised to read them a paper at their June meeting, to which the members looked forward very much, since it was, of course, widely known that she was the author of “Gambits,” and something very advanced might be expected.