He lifted her gently to the ground, and she stood quietly at one side while he tumbled out the barrel and the bags from the back of the sleigh with great caution. He could not stay for a word; already he had much time to make up, and discussion of any sort, hospitality even, would retard him. The light had quite disappeared from the west, and a few pale stars—God’s candles, he called them—were beginning to kindle in the dark above. He stooped to her.
“Whin I’m gone, Cushla machree, ye’ll go to the door an’ they’ll let ye in—they’re foine fellies. ’Tis but a shtep up there annyhow; ye can’t niver miss it—see, where the rid light shows t’rough the cracks. An’ ye’ll not ferget me, little wan?”
“No—no,” she choked.
He caught her in his arms and kissed her; but though he held her very close, he could not see her face well because of the misty curtain that had dropped suddenly before his eyes. In that moment he realized how far, how very far, below her thought of him he really was. He put her down almost roughly, detaching the little clinging fingers with scant tenderness, and sprang into the sleigh. An instant, from that vantage point, he looked her way; then Danny and Whitefoot, surprised into using their best wind by a fierce sting of the whip, dashed into the dark, their bells swinging out a sharp, tremulous cry of bronze that cut the air like a knife.
“Good-by,” she called in a breaking voice.
And back from the distance came the answer:
“Good-by, little swateheart. God love ye an’—”
She stood waiting, listening to the bells that grew faint and fainter until they were like a chime from Fairyland; when at last her loving ears could hear them no longer she turned and trotted obediently to the house. The door was closed, but a narrow thread of light glimmered warmly at the sill, and a tiny fiery eye peeped out half way up the dark surface. She struck the wood with her little clinched fist; struck it once, then again—a twig snapping off in the teeth of the frost would have sounded louder.
From within there came the noise of many voices and great bursts of laughter, but no lessening of the merriment made room for her appeal.
