He gathered her up and went to sit in a chair big enough to hold them both. He kissed her eyes, her saucy chin, her hair. He told her in tender ways, known only to the Irish, how he loved her, how he wanted to make for her a shield of his love, to keep her safe and happy.
“Do ye love me, Cricket?” he begged her.
“Larry,” she said, solemnly; “I feel as if you were all the people I have loved in my whole life—Ann, Mrs. Benjamin, Jerry, and Herbert——”
“And Percy?” he teased her. “When did ye begin to love me?” he asked, in the old way of lovers.
“On the boat, going down.”
“Ye didn’t.”
“I did.”
“I felt it comin’ on me, stronger and stronger, at Bermuda, but that night when ye came into my arms in the garden settled it. I had to come and find out who ye thought ye were lovin’.”
She only laughed. Luncheon was announced and the family appeared. The meal was more or less the usual midday repast, but to Isabelle and Larry it might have been ambrosia, or sawdust. They made motions of eating, between long glances. Wally and Max tried not to notice, but Miss Watts’s face was wreathed in a fatuous smile of satisfaction.