“Well! if I must, I must. But I don’t feel as if I were in a dream, but in some real blessed heaven so long as I see you.”
At last he went. Nancy was awaiting Maggie, the side-gate.
“Bless us and save us, bairn! what a time it has taken thee to get the water. Is the spring dry with the hot weather?”
Maggie ran past her. All dinner-time she heard her mother’s voice in long-continued lamentation about something. She answered at random, and startled her mother by asserting that she thought “it” was very good; the said “it” being milk turned sour by thunder. Mrs. Browne spoke quite sharply, “No one is so particular as you, Maggie. I have known you drink water, day after day, for breakfast, when you were a little girl, because your cup of milk had a drowned fly in it; and now you tell me you don’t care for this, and don’t mind that, just as if you could eat up all the things which are spoiled by the heat. I declare my head aches so, I shall go and lie down as soon as ever dinner is over.”
If this was her plan, Maggie thought she had no time to lose in making her confession. Frank would be here before her mother got up again to tea. But she dreaded speaking about her happiness; it seemed as yet so cobweb-like, as if a touch would spoil its beauty.
“Mamma, just wait a minute. Just sit down in your chair while I tell you something. Please, dear mamma.” She took a stool, and sat at her mother’s feet; and then she began to turn the wedding-ring on Mrs. Browne’s hand, looking down and never speaking, till the latter became impatient.
“What is it you have got to say, child? Do make haste, for I want to go up-stairs.”
With a great jerk of resolution, Maggie said:
“Mamma, Frank Buxton has asked me to marry him.”
She hid her face in her mother’s lap for an instant; and then she lifted it up, as brimful of the light of happiness as is the cup of a water-lily of the sun’s radiance.