Trade was brisker, said Melia, than she had ever known it.
Josiah was glad of that. He then looked round to assure himself that they were alone in the shop and being convinced that such was the case, he stood a moment awkwardly silent, balancing himself like a stork first on one leg and then on the other.
“Gel,” he took her hand suddenly, “you are back in my will. Sally’s back too. You are both going to have an equal share with Ethel.” He felt the roughened, toil-stained hand begin to quiver a little in his strong grasp. “Bygones have got to be bygones. Understand me.” He drew her towards him and kissed her stoutly and firmly in the middle of the forehead.
He retained his hold while her hot tears dripped on to his hand. She stood tense and rigid, unable to speak or move. But she knew as she stood there that it was no use fighting him or fighting herself. His masterfulness, his simplicity, his courage had reawakened her earliest and deepest instinct, the love and admiration she had once had for him. Of a sudden she began to sob pitifully. With a queer look on his face he took out a large red handkerchief and put his arms round her and wiped her eyes slowly and with a gentleness hard to credit in him, just as he had done when as a very little girl she had fallen and hurt herself on the tiled yard of the Duke of Wellington.
Speech was not possible to father or daughter for several minutes as time is reckoned in Love Lane, although to both it seemed infinitely longer, and then said the Mayor, “We’ll expect you up at Strathfieldsaye on Christmas Day. Lunch one-thirty sharp.” Then he added in a tone that was almost peremptory, “If that man o’ yours happens to get home on leave your mother would like him to come, too.”
Her tear-dimmed eyes looked at him rather queerly. “Didn’t you know, Dad?” The voice had something in it of the child he remembered but it was so faint that it was barely audible.
“Know what?” His own voice had more asperity than it was meant to have. But she was able to make allowances for it, as she always had done in the days when she really understood him.
“Bill’s in hospital.”
He drew in his breath quickly. The thought ran through his mind that it was well he had had the sense to learn by experience. “Where? What hospital?” He was just a trifle nervous, just a shade flurried. As near as a toucher he had put it off too long, as in the case of Sally.