“Oh! Blessed vision! happy Child.”
“Are you sure you are glad to come home, Allie dear?” said Marjorie Hume, looking up rather doubtfully into her friend’s face, for Allison had said not a word in answer to her exclamations for some time.
They were walking together through a wide street in Aberdeen, and Marjorie had been amusing herself looking at the people whom they met, and at the pretty things in the shop windows, and had been enjoying it all so much that, for a while, she had never doubted that Allison was enjoying it also. But Allison was looking away to the sea, and her face was very grave, and there was a look in her eyes that Marjorie had not seen in them for a long time now. The look changed as the child repeated the question:
“Allie, you are surely glad to be going home?”
“I am very glad to be bringing my darling home strong and well to her father and mother and them all. They will be more than glad to see us again.”
“And, Allie dear, it is your home too, till Mrs Esselmont wants you again. And you will try to be happy there? And you will not be ay wishing to win away to your brother in America—at least for a while?”
“No, not for a while. But I must go when he sends word that he needs me. That may be sooner than we ken. When he gets his own land, and has his house built, then I will go. But I am in no hurry,” said Allison, after a pause. “And now let us go and take a look at the sea. It is too early yet to see Dr Fleming.”
“But it is not the same sea that we have been looking at so long—the sea that has helped to make me strong and well.”
“It is a grand sea, however, and it is our own. And to-day it is as bonny, and smooth, and blue, as ever the Southern Sea was, and the same sun is shining upon it. And we must make haste, for we have no time to lose.”
They did not go at once, however. As they turned into the next street, a hand was laid on Allison’s arm, and looking up she met the eyes of one whom she had not seen for many a day. She had last seen him looking sorrowfully down on the face of her dying father.