She had learnt all the songs I liked; had prepared the dresses in which I had said she looked best; would greet me, oh, so gladly!
I was to keep my promise and arrive on Christmas-eve, when her mother would be happy to see me; and she—well, she didn’t know yet whether she would speak to me or not:—it, really, depended whether I was “good!”
I took my passage in a steamer leaving the next day; but, instead of getting home on Christmas-eve, I only arrived at Liverpool a day before the close of the year—six days late! However, I was in England at last, in the same dear land that held my darling; and she would forgive me, I knew, when she saw how glad I was to get back to her dear little self. “Naughty Frank!” she would say—“I won’t speak to you at all, sir!”
And, wouldn’t she?
Oh, dear no!
All the way up to town from the fair city on the Mersey, the railway nymphs, whom I had previously noticed on my journey to Southampton, were as busy as then, with their musical strains.
The burden of their present song, echoing through my heart, was,—
“Going to see Min! Going to see Min!
Going to see Min, without delay!
Going to see Min! Going to see Min!
Soon! Soon!! Soon!!”
The last bars chiming in when the buffers joined the chorus with a “jolt, jolt, jolt.”
As the train glided, at length—after some six hours of reeling and bumping and puffing along, the railway nymphs never slackening their song for an instant, into the Euston-square station—I saw the kind vicar and dear little Miss Pimpernell awaiting me on the platform.