‘Yes, yes, my lad, it must be good-night, for you mustn’t stay here!’ exclaimed Mrs Llewellyn, who was fearful of the effects of any agitation on her invalid. ‘You’ve had your wish and seen Nell, and you’ve prayed a beautiful prayer, and now you must come back to the parlour with me and have a bit of supper. Go down to the kitchen, Betsy,’ she continued to the old nurse, ‘and get our Nell another drop of beef-tea, and I’ll be up to see after her as soon as the table’s cleared. Bless her heart! if she isn’t off again. She’ll want all the sleep she can get now, to make up for the sore time she’s passed through. Come, Hugh.’
But the young minister refused all her offers of hospitality. He felt as if food would choke him just then. He wanted to be alone to think of his great and unexpected joy—to thank the Giver of it over and over again. He walked home through the crisp October evening, wandering far afield, in order to commune with his own thoughts, and enlarging the prayer of thankfulness, with which his heart was bursting, by another petition, that God, who had given this woman back to him and her friends, would give her to him also and altogether as his wife.
He did not see Nell again during the period of convalescence that she spent in her own room. But not one day passed without his presence at the farm and his thoughts of her being brought to her notice by some little offering from his hands. One day it would be a bunch of glowing chrysanthemums, from the deepest bronze to the palest pink and purest white. The next, he brought a basket of fruit—a cluster of hothouse grapes—to get which he had walked for miles, or a bunch of bananas, or anything which was considered a dainty in Usk. Once he sent her a few verses of a hymn, neatly copied out on fair paper; but these Nell put on one side with a smile which savoured of contempt. She was now fairly on the road for recovery; and even Hetty, who had been going backwards and forwards every day, began to find the walk from Dale Farm was rather long, and that her mother-in-law needed a little more of her company. The services of the doctor and old Betsy Hobbs were dispensed with, and Mrs Llewellyn found there was no longer any necessity for her to leave all the churning and baking to her farm maids, but that she could devote the usual time to them herself. It was an accredited fact that Nell had been snatched from the jaws of death, and that her relatives need have no more fears on her account. Still Hugh Owen continued to pay her his daily attentions, till she, like women courted by men for whom they have no fancy, began to weary of seeing the flowers and fruit and books coming in every afternoon, and to cast them somewhat contemptuously aside. It was a grand day at Panty-cuckoo Farm when she first came down the stairs, supported by her father and mother—very shaky and weak, but really well again, and saying good-bye to bed in the daytime for good and all. Mrs Llewellyn was a proud and happy woman when she saw her daughter installed on the solitary sofa which the house could boast of, swathed round in shawls and blankets, and a very ghost of her former self, but yet alive, and only needing time to make her strong again.
‘Well, my dear lass,’ she said, as she helped Nell to her cup of tea, ‘I never thought at one time to see you on that sofa again, nor downstairs at all, except it was in your coffin. You’ve got a lot to be thankful for, Nell; it’s not many constitutions that could have weathered such an illness.’
Nell sipped the tea she held in her hand, and wondered what was the use of coming back to a world that didn’t want her, and which she didn’t want. But she was still too weak to argue, even if she would have argued such a subject with her mother. As the meal was in the course of progress a gentle tap sounded on the outer door.
‘Now, I’ll bet that’s Hugh Owen, dear lad!’ exclaimed Mrs Llewellyn briskly, as she rose to answer it. ‘He’ll be main pleased and surprised to see our Nell downstairs. He’s been so curious to hear when the doctor would let her get up, and I wouldn’t tell him, just to keep him a bit in suspense.’
She opened the door as she spoke, calling out,—
‘How are ye, Hugh, my lad? Come in, do. We’ve got company to tea to-night, and you’re heartily welcome.’
But Hugh shrunk back.
‘I won’t disturb you if you’ve company, Mrs Llewellyn,’ he said. ‘I only stepped over to hear how your daughter is this evening, and to ask her acceptance of these,’ and he shyly held out a bouquet of hot-house flowers.