“Yes, yes!” cried Julia, catching the infection of her mother’s enthusiasm; “and it will be soon, will it not, mother—it will be soon?”
“Let us pray that it may, my child.”
“But, mother, why do we not go to him?” Mrs Hallam shivered slightly. “We should have been near him all these years, and we might have seen him. Oh, mother! if it had been only once! Why did you not go?” She rose from her knees, as if moved by her excitement. “Why, I would have gone a hundred times as far!” she said excitedly. “No distance should have kept me from the husband that I loved.”
“Julie! Julie! are you reproaching me?”
“Mother!” cried the girl, flinging herself upon her neck, “as if I could reproach you!”
“It would not be just, my child,” said Mrs Hallam, caressing the soft dark head, “for I have tried so hard.”
“Yes, yes, I know, dear; and I have known ever since I have been old enough to think.”
“In every letter I have sent I have prayed for his leave to come out and join him—that I might be near him, for I dared not take the responsibility upon myself with you.”
“Mother!”
“If I had been alone in the world, Julia, I should have gone years upon years ago; but I felt that I should be committing a breach of trust to take his young, tender child all those thousands of miles across the sea, to a land whose society is wild, and often lawless.”