Getting tired at last, Mr Ewring went out into the courtyard, and called in his loudest tones—“Do-ro-thy!”
He thought he heard a faint answer of “Coming!” which sounded high up and a long way off: so he went back to the kitchen, and took a seat on the hearth opposite the cat. In a few minutes the sound of running down stairs was audible, and at last Dorothy appeared—her gown pinned up behind, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and her entire aspect that of a woman who had just come off hard and dirty work.
“Eh, Master Ewring! but I’m sorry to have kept you a-waiting. Look you, I was mopping out the— Dear heart, but what is come to you? Has the resurrection happened? for your face looks nigh too glad for aught else.”
The gladness died suddenly away, as those words brought to Mr Ewring the thought of something which could not happen—the memory of the beloved face which for thirty years had been the light of his home, and which he should behold in this world never any more.
“Nay, Dorothy—nay, not that! Yet it will be, one day, thank God! And we have much this morrow to thank God for, whereof I came to tell thee.”
“Why, what has come, trow?”
The glad light rose again to Mr Ewring’s eyes.
“Gideon has come, and hath subdued the Midianites!” he answered, with a ring of triumph in his voice. “King David is come, and the Philistines will take flight, and Israel shall sit in peace under his vine and fig-tree. May God save Elizabeth our Queen!”
“Good lack, but you never mean that!” cried Dorothy in a voice as delighted as his own. “Why then, Mistress ’ll be back to her own, and them poor little dears ’ll be delivered from them black snakes, and there ’ll be Bible-reading and sermons again.”
“Ay, every one of them, I trust. And a man may say what he will that is right, without looking first round to see if a spy be within hearing. We are free, Dorothy, once more.”