"Ay, ay!" interrupted Cornelius, looking fidgetty, "how is Trim?"
"He died a year ago," gravely replied Mr. Smalley. "Ah! my friend, my heart smote me when I heard the tidings. I had always been harsh to Trim, you know."
"You harsh to any one!" said Cornelius, smiling.
But Mr. Smalley assured him his nature was harsh; though, with the grace of God, he had been able to subdue it a little. Darling, he might add, had been the means of softening many an asperity. He kissed her kindly as he spoke. She was a pale, fair-haired little creature, very like him, and evidently indulged to excess. He was wrapped in her, and when of her own accord, she left him to come to me, he felt so much astonished, that he could speak of nothing else. In her two years' life, Darling had never done such a thing before. Indeed her shyness, he plainly hinted, was alone an insuperable obstacle to a second union.
"Mr. Smalley," I said, "Darling has just agreed to stay with me, if you will leave her."
"You have bewitched her," he replied, giving me a grateful look; but he confessed it would be a great weight off his mind; and with many thanks and evident regret, he left me the treasure of his heart.
Darling soon fell asleep in my arms. One of her little hands was clasped around my neck, the other held mine; her fair head rested on my bosom, and her calm, sleeping face lay upraised and unconscious with closed eyes and parted lips. I stooped, and with some emotion, softly kissed the child of my persecutor. Cornelius, who sat by me, whispered the two concluding lines of Wordsworth's sonnet, with a slight modification:
"How much is mixed and reconciled in thee,
Of mother's love, with maiden purity."
Then bending over me, he attempted to embrace Darling; but his beard woke her; she screamed, kicked, burst into a new fit of crying every time he attempted to sit near me, and said "her papa should take me to Rugby."
"And be your mamma. No, indeed, Miss Smalley," replied Cornelius, tartly.
"She is mine, and I keep her."