“You may well wish me happiness in my honeymoon,” he said, laughingly.
“Are you married? Why, when—O Stephen, Stephen! is it Ermine?”
“You are a first-rate guesser, little one. Yes, I have Ermine safe; and I will keep her so, God helping me.”
“I am so glad, Steenie!” said Derette, falling into the use of the old pet name, generally laid aside now. “Tell Ermine I am so glad to hear that, and so sorry to lose you both: but I will pray God and the saints to bless you as long as I live, and that will be better for you than our meeting, though it will not be the same thing to me.”
“‘So glad, and so sorry!’ It seems to me, Cousin, that’s no inapt picture of life. God keep thee!—to the day when—Ermine says—it will be all ‘glad’ and no ‘sorry.’”
“Ay, we shall meet one day. Farewell!”
The days passed, and no more was seen or heard of Stephen in Oxford. What had become of him was not known at the Walnut Tree, until one evening when Osbert looked in about supper-time, and was invited to stay for the meal, with the three of whom the family now consisted—Manning, Isel, and Haimet. As Isel set on the table a platter of little pies, she said—
“There, that’s what poor Stephen used to like so well. Maybe you’ll fancy them too, Osbert.”
“Why do you call him poor Stephen?” questioned Osbert, as he appropriated a pie. “He is not particularly poor, so far as I know.”
“Well, we’ve lost him like,” said Isel, with a sigh. “When folks vanish out of your sight like snow in a thaw, one cannot help feeling sorry.”