Mrs. Malony was busy making her husband's supper one evening about a week after this, when the door opened, and in bounced Jack.
"Och, sure," she cried, "and is it me own dear bhoy, Johnnie Greybreeks? Indade and indade it was only this blissed morning I was talking to Phatrick about ye. An' how well you are looking, alanna! troth it's the foine young gintleman ye are already entoirely. See there, the very cat knows ye; and won't Peter be plazed!"
And so she rattled on. By-and-by the husband himself came in, smiling all over his black and smutty face, and right heartily Johnnie shook his hard and brooky fist.
After supper Peter came down, and brought the fiddle too. That was one of the happiest nights ever Johnnie remembered spending.
Next day he went to see Mr. Dawson and the Morgans, but only for a hurried visit. Then the steamer Iona took him down stream, and at sunset he was seated beside his mother's cottage fire, with the dearest ones on earth beside him—one on each side.
How cosy and home-like everything looked around him! even the canary and the cat seemed as if they had been specially ordained for the cheerful room. There were flowers, too, everywhere, inside and out; but Maggie Mackenzie was the sweetest flower of all—so even her brother Jack thought.
She was dressed primly, it is true, as became her position as a nurse, but that did not detract in the slightest degree from her lady-like appearance.
Jack's mother, too, was looking well.
"Strange how things come about, dear boy," she said. "You see the Lord heard our prayers, and has raised us up friends. For ever blessed be his name!"
As she spoke she wiped away a tear with her white apron. It was a tear of joy and gratitude, however.