On the whole he was not so hungry as his daughter. For it was a long fast from the one o'clock dinner-hour at Miss Simmonds' to the close of Mary's vigil, which was often extended to midnight. She was young, and had not yet learned to bear "clemming."
One evening, as she sang a merry song over her work, stopping occasionally to sigh, the blind Margaret came groping in. It had been one of Mary's additional sorrows that her friend had been absent from home, accompanying the lecturer on music in his round among the manufacturing towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Her grandfather, too, had seen this a good time for going his expeditions in search of specimens; so that the house had been shut up for several weeks.
"Oh! Margaret, Margaret! how glad I am to see you. Take care. There, now, you're all right, that's father's chair. Sit down."—She kissed her over and over again.
"It seems like the beginning o' brighter times, to see you again, Margaret. Bless you! And how well you look!"
"Doctors always send ailing folk for change of air! and you know I've had plenty o' that same lately."
"You've been quite a traveller for sure! Tell us all about it, do, Margaret. Where have you been to, first place?"
"Eh, lass, that would take a long time to tell. Half o'er the world I sometimes think. Bolton, and Bury, and Owdham, and Halifax, and—but Mary, guess who I saw there! May be you know though, so it's not fair guessing."
"No, I donnot. Tell me, Margaret, for I cannot abide waiting and guessing."
"Well, one night as I were going fra' my lodgings wi' the help on a lad as belonged to th' landlady, to find the room where I were to sing, I heard a cough before me, walking along. Thinks I, that's Jem Wilson's cough, or I'm much mistaken. Next time came a sneeze and a cough, and then I were certain. First I hesitated whether I should speak, thinking if it were a stranger he'd may be think me forrard. [41] But I knew blind folks must not be nesh about using their tongues, so says I, 'Jem Wilson, is that you?' And sure enough it was, and nobody else. Did you know he were in Halifax, Mary?"
| Footnote 41: |
"Forrard," forward.
[(Return)] |