He was lifted up against her heart, folded fast, and hugging her round the neck, they kissed and cried and cried and kissed, and at last she let him down; and the Sergeant-Major, with the cane under his arm, the carpet-bag in one hand, and the boy’s wrist firmly held in the other, marched out of the door.
“That’s enough—don’t follow, woman,” said he, after they had gone about twenty yards on the path; “and I’ll report you,” he added with a nod which, with these pleasant words, she might take as a farewell or not as she pleased.
She stood on the little rising ground by the hawthorn-tree, kissing her hands wildly after him, with streaming eyes.
“I’ll be sure to see you soon. I’d walk round the world barefoot to see my pretty man again,” she kept crying after him; “and I’ll bring the ninepins, I’ll be sure. Mammy’s comin’, my darlin’.”
And the receding figure of the little boy was turned toward her all it could. He was gazing over his shoulder, with cheeks streaming with tears, and his little hand waving yearningly back to her until he was out of sight. And after a while she turned back, and there was their ninepins’ ground, and the tarn, and her sobs quickened almost to a scream; and she sat down on the stone bench under the window—for she could not bear to enter the dark cottage—and there, in Irish phrase, she cried her fill.
In the meantime Archdale and his companion, or prisoner—which you will—pursued their march. He still held the boy’s wrist, and the boy cried and sobbed gently to himself all the way.
When they came down to the little hamlet called Maple Wickets he hired a boy to carry the carpet-bag to Wunning, four miles further on, where the Warhampton ’bus passes, as everybody knows, at half-past twelve o’clock daily.
They resumed their march. The Sergeant was a serenely taciturn man. He no more thought of addressing the boy than he did of apostrophising the cane or the carpet-bag. He let him sob on, and neither snubbed nor consoled him, but carried his head serene and high, looking straight before him.
At length the novelty of the scene began to act upon the volatility of childhood.
As he walked by the Sergeant he began to prattle, at first timidly, and then more volubly.