‘Wrote what?’ he asked, clasping the hand with which she offered him the misdirected letter, and holding both closely.
‘I only wrote “Come,”’ stammered Kate, the tears starting into her eyes, ‘and I thought—oh, I don’t know what I thought! I directed it to Liverpool instead of Lentford, and it’s been wandering about ever since. Do you understand?’
‘Do you mean you will be my wife?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered.
They had only three minutes to themselves. Three minutes was the time allotted for each case, and as it expired the door was opened again an inch or two to see if the doctor was ready for the next patient. Dr. Carey led Kate to the other door, and dismissed her with a glance which set her heart beating fast with happiness. She mounted the long flight of stairs and entered the ward where Mrs. Duffy was lying as if she trod on air. The old woman was resting very comfortably in bed, her eyes calm and bright, and a faint streak of the old apple-red beginning to show itself upon her cheek. The good chance for her recovery was a still better one this morning.
‘He’s coming back again this morning,’ she whispered in Kate’s ear; ‘they let him stay beside me all yesterday, and he’s coming back again to-day. It’s a beautiful Christmas this is; I never knew one like it. I hope they’ll never catch that poor raskill as shot me, I do. It ’ud spoil my Christmas and Johnny’s if they did. Has it been a happy Christmas for you, my dear?’
‘Very happy,’ answered Kate, with a bright smile, as the present joy blotted out the remembrance of the past sorrow.
‘That’s right, my dear!’ murmured Mrs. Duffy, ‘I don’t know as ever I knew such a Christmas.’
There is little more to be told. Dr. Carey made his appearance at Dr. Layard’s that evening, and delighted him beyond measure by asking him for Kate. Mrs. Duffy recovered and lived two or three years longer in undisturbed happiness, and in a degree of comfort to which she had been unaccustomed throughout her life. For her son, who had not prospered much in Australia, worked industriously and steadily to maintain her at home, and devoted himself to her with real tenderness. It was not till after her death, when Kate Carey was standing beside her coffin looking down at the placid face and closed eyes of the old woman, that he told the story of his return home.
‘I’d worked my passage across, ma’am,’ he said, the tears rolling down his cheeks, ‘and I’d landed in Liverpool a week afore Christmas, with as much as five pound in my pocket, all I’d saved in Australy; and there were a lot set on me, and took me to a public, and I suppose I drank all my wits away. I reached Ilverton by the last train on Christmas Eve, but I didn’t know as mother were gone to live in the town. It were a bitter night, and I slept on a bench at the railway station. I hadn’t a penny left, when I set out to seek mother; and I were wandering about very miserable, when I saw a decent old woman coming along all alone. I only thought I’d frighten a shilling out of her. I never meant no harm. The pistol were an old pistol I’d had in the bush; and I didn’t recollect it was loaded, and it went bursting off, all in an instant of time. That quite brought me to, and I were running away to find somebody, when I see you and the doctor coming. I seemed to know it were a doctor. But when I found out it were my own poor old mother, which I did face to face with her in the hospital, I felt as I should die. She never knew as it were me, never. She used to talk about him, and say, “I forgave him, Johnny, and I hope God has forgave him too, whoever he is.” I shall never see another woman like my poor old mother.’