“You look bright to-night, sister,” said Stephen, greeting her in his quaint way; “have you heard good news?”
“I am waiting for good news,” said Mrs Morely, with a quiver in her voice.
“They never wait in vain who wait for Him,” said Stephen, looking a little wistfully from one to the other, as though he would fain hear more. But there was no time. Little Sophy’s face was growing anxious; for her tea-cakes were in danger of being spoiled by the delay, and there was time to think of nothing else when they appeared.
“Have you had a good time, Dolly?” asked Stephen, as they went down the hill together in the moonlight, when the evening’s frost had made the roads fit to walk on again.
“A good time, Stephen—a very good time,” said Dolly, brightly. “I think that poor soul has renewed her strength; and, indeed I think so have I. Yes, dear, I’ve had a very good time to-day.”
Chapter Eight.
John Morely’s Friend.
In the meantime, John Morely was fighting his battle over again. He left the house of Stephen Grattan a humbled man, without strength, without courage, hardly daring to hope for victory over a foe which he knew waited only for a solitary desponding hour to assail him. The dread and terror that fell upon him when he found himself homeless and friendless in the streets of Montreal cannot be told. Feeling deeply his own degradation, it seemed to him that even the chance eyes that rested on him as he passed by must see it too, and despise him; and he hurried on through the bitter cold, eager only to get out of sight.