“Thank you, Missy,” said David at last. The others said nothing at all.
“Thank me! I don't want you to thank me at all. What have I done but rob you and pay you back again? No—I only want you—to forgive me—if you can!”
“I do forgive you, my dear; but I forgave you long ago,” said David, smoothing back her hair and kissing her upon the forehead.
“You two forgive me, I know,” she said, turning to the others.
Arabella embraced her tearfully, but John William only laughed sardonically. What had he to forgive?
“I knew you did. So now there is only one thing more that I want to send me away happy.”
“Send you away! Where to? You've only just come,” cried Mr. Teesdale, as loud as he dared; but even as he spoke he remembered the special difficulty of the occasion, and his face twitched with the pain. “Why, where did you think of going to?” he added, wiping his lips with his red pocket-handkerchief.
“Back to the Dandenong Ranges. I'm so happy there, you don't know! Thought I'd left? Not me, don't you believe it. No, I must get back to my work as quick as I can. And you'll be able to sit in quietness and look out through the gun-room window”—she pointed to the gun-room door—“and across the river-timber to them blue ranges, and you'll be able to say, 'Missy's working there. She's honest now, whatever she was once; and she's trying to make up for her whole life.' Yes, and you may say, 'She's trying to make up for it all, and it was us that taught her; it was us that took her out of hell and gave her a glimpse of the other thing!' That's what you'll be able to say, Mr. Teesdale. And I'll know you're looking at the ranges, and I'll think you're looking at me, every evening in the summer-time, and every dinner-time all the year round. They ain't so blue as they look, when you get there—I guess the sky isn't either when you get there—but they're blue enough for Missy; they're blue enough for me.”
The tears were running down her face. John William had interjected, here and there, “You're never going back at all.” But she had taken no notice of him; and when he repeated the same speech now, she shook her head and only sobbed the more.
“What is it that would send you away happy?” asked poor David; for he knew well what the answer was to be; and by now he was himself intensely agitated.