"With thee?" she asked, in a quiet, glancing way.
"Ay, lass! Trust me, I'll ne'er ask thee to leave Manchester while I'm in it. Because I've heard fine things of Canada; and our overlooker has a cousin in the foundry line there.—Thou knowest where Canada is, Mary?"
"Not rightly—not now, at any rate;—but with thee, Jem," her voice sunk to a soft, low whisper, "anywhere—"
What was the use of a geographical description?
"But father!" said Mary, suddenly breaking that delicious silence with the one sharp discord in her present life.
She looked up at her lover's grave face; and then the message her father had sent flashed across her memory.
"Oh, Jem, did I tell you?—Father sent word he wished to speak with you. I was to bid you come to him at eight to-night. What can he want, Jem?"
"I cannot tell," replied he. "At any rate I'll go. It's no use troubling ourselves to guess," he continued, after a pause of a few minutes, during which they slowly and silently paced up and down the by-street, into which he had led her when their conversation began. "Come and see mother, and then I'll take thee home, Mary. Thou wert all in a tremble when first I came up with thee; thou'rt not fit to be trusted home by thyself," said he, with fond exaggeration of her helplessness.
Yet a little more lovers' loitering; a few more words, in themselves nothing—to you nothing, but to those two what tender passionate language can I use to express the feelings which thrilled through that young man and maiden, as they listened to the syllables made dear and lovely through life by that hour's low-whispered talk.
It struck the half hour past seven.