“You know I think the world of you,” he blurted out, feeling very near tears himself. “You know you’re just the best pal a chap ever had.”
Paddy gave a little crooked smile.
“Then you ought not to want me to get married,” she said.
“You know I only want you to have a good time, and that I’d rather a thousand time you were a man and could come with me to the Argentine.”
Paddy slipped her arm through his and rubbed her face against his coat-sleeve caressingly. “I know you would, Jack. I’m just horrid, but you must forget and make allowances. I feel—oh, I don’t know what I feel—it’s so positively awful.”
“I know,” he said feelingly. “That’s just it, positively awful. But it’s not any good minding, so we’d better go on trying to pretend we don’t. I’ll be glad when we’re started now. I dread to-morrow so.”
The next evening they stood together leaning on the ship rail, and straining their eyes up the loch while they steamed away from Greenore. The terrible day was over at last, and both felt quite exhausted. “How had they ever kept up at all?” they wondered, through those three meals of forced conversations, forced smiles, and poor attempts at merriment. How had the aunties ever kept up? Of a certainty they were sobbing their hearts out now in the empty, empty Parsonage. There had been no tears until the final good-by and then the strain had become too much for them. But Jack had still held on manfully.
“Don’t you fret, aunties,” he said, with an odd little crack in his voice. “I’ll be back almost before you’ve had time to tidy up after me, with pockets full of gold; and Paddy and I will be flying over the furniture again, and you’ll both be collecting the ornaments, and you’ll just forget we’ve ever been away at all.”
“That’s if I don’t poison somebody and get hanged meanwhile,” said Paddy in a cheerful way that made them all laugh in spite of themselves. “I’m sure I’ll never know one medicine from another.”
And now the ship is steaming away, and the two travellers strain their eyes to the familiar mountains, outlined distinctly against the star-spangled sky in the bright moonlight.