“Were you waitin’ long?” she asked. “I never stopped at all to change a stitch and dear knows ’twas a sin how I cheated on that last one—no more than a flout and a spin, and not that maybe; only I was afraid for my soul you’d be gone. Was it long you waited?”
“Forty-two years,” said His Grace. “Forty-two years and three days.”
He watched the rose flood up to her lashes at that, but the joyous eyes never swerved from his.
“Ah, well,” she murmured, “I waited seventeen my own self, and I not half the size of you—no higher than your pocket, if you come to look. I can’t think at all what you’ve been doing with yourself all that time.”
“Don’t think—ever,” he said. “I’ve done nothing worth a moment’s thought but miss you.”
“Have you missed me then, truly?” she whispered. “Oh, it’s from farther than Cork I’d come to hear you say that; I’d come from Heaven itself, may the Saints there forgive me. Say it again, quick!”
“I’ve missed you since the day I drew breath,” he told her, and his voice shook. “Every day that I’ve lived has been black and bare and cold without you—blackest because I never knew I’d find you. Biddy, is it true? Things don’t happen like this, do they? No one out of a dream ever had such hair—no one out of a fairy tale such eyes! Biddy, would you laugh like that if it were a dream?”
“I would that,” she remarked with decision. “It’s a fine dream and a grand fairy tale and the truest truth you ever heard in your life. I knew ’twas you even when you were scowlin’, but those lights were in my eyes, so I couldn’t be sure till you smiled.”
“Biddy, how did you know?”
She pushed the scarf back from those golden bubbles with a gay gesture of impatience.