“You like him better than you think, Chris—poor little motherless thing.”
“Perhaps I do. I wonder if his mother ever looks hungry towards Newtake when she passes by?”
“Perhaps others took him and told the mother that he was dead.”
“She’s dead herself more like. Else the thing wouldn’t have falled out.”
There was a pause, then Martin talked of various matters. But he could not fight for long against the desire of his heart and presently plunged, as he had done five years before, into a proposal.
“He being gone—poor Clem—do you think—? Have you thought, I mean? Has it made a difference, Chris? ’T is so hard to put it into words without sounding brutal and callous. Only men are selfish when they love.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
A sudden inspiration prompted his reply. He said nothing for a moment, but with a hand that shook somewhat, drew forth his pocketbook, opened it, fumbled within, and then handed over to Chris the brown ruins of flowers long dead.
“You picked them,” he said slowly; “you picked them long ago and flung them away from you when you said ‘No’ to me—said it so kindly in the past. Take them in your hand again.”
“Dead bluebells,” she answered. “Ess, I can call home the time. To think you gathered them up!” She looked at him with something not unlike love in her eyes and fingered the flowers gently. “You’m a gude man, Martin —the husband for a gude lass. Best to find one if you can. Wish I could help’e.”