All honor to the little creature for her transports! All honor to her tears and laughter, when the three were locked in one another's arms! All honor to the heartiness with which she met the sunburnt, sailor-fellow, with his dark, streaming hair, halfway, and never turned her rosy little mouth aside, but suffered him to kiss it freely, and to press her to his bounding heart!
“Now tell him (John) all, Edward,” sobbed Dot, “and don't spare me, for nothing shall make me spare myself in his eyes ever again.”
“I was the man,” said Edward.
“And you could steal disguised into the home of your old friend,” rejoined the carrier...
“But I had a passion for her.”
“You!”
“I had,” rejoined the other, “and she returned it—I heard twenty miles away that she was false to me—I had no mind to reproach her but to see for myself.”
Once more Richard's voice faltered, and again it rang clear, this time in Dot's tones:
“But when she knew that Edward was alive, John, and had come back—and when she—that's me, John—told him all—and how his sweetheart had believed him to be dead, and how she had been over-persuaded by her mother into a marriage—and when she—that's me again, John—told him they were not married, though close upon it—and when he went nearly mad for joy to hear it—then she—that's me again—said she would go and sound his sweetheart—and she did—and they were married an hour ago!—John, an hour ago! And here's the bride! And Gruff and Tackleton may die a bachelor! And I'm a happy little woman, May, God bless you!”
Little woman, how she sobbed! John Perrybingle would have caught her in his arms. But no; she wouldn't let him.