The toy merchant gazed at him without winking. Even the half-shut eye was now open.
“Heaven bless her!” said the carrier, “for the cheerful way she has tried not to let me see how it was! Heaven help me, that, in my slow mind I have not found it out before. Poor child! Poor Dot! Strange I did not realize when I have seen her eyes fill with tears on hearing of such a marriage as our own spoken of. How good and kind she has been! The thought will comfort me when I am here alone.”
“Here alone?” said Tackleton. “Then you do mean to take some notice of her deceit?”
“I mean,” answered the carrier, “to do her the greatest kindness in my power—to try to make it all up to her. She shall be free to go where she will.”
“Make it up to her!” exclaimed Tackleton, twisting and turning his great ears with his hands. “I must have heard wrong. You didn’t say that, of course.”
“Didn’t I speak plainly?” said the carrier, giving the toy merchant a shake.
“Very plainly indeed,” answered Tackleton.
“As if I meant it?”
“Very much as if you meant it.”
“Anger and distrust have left me,” said the carrier; “and nothing but my grief remains. In an unhappy moment some old lover, better suited to her years than I, returned. Last night she saw him in the interview we witnessed. It was wrong. But otherwise than this, she is innocent if there is truth on earth! I should not have taken her from her home. She shall return to it, and I will trouble her no more. Her father and mother will be here to-day, and they shall take her home. This is the end of what you showed me. Now, it’s over.”