"I'll come up whenever you want me and I can get away, Maggie, an' next time I'll bring you more comfort, I hope. Good-bye."
"Och, darlin'!—T'row a kiss, Billy. Look, Aileen, at the kisses me b'y's t'rowin' yer!" she exclaimed delightedly; and Billy, in the exuberance of his joy that tears were things of the past, continued to throw kisses after the lady till she disappeared down the street.
IX
Oh, but her heart was hot with indignation as she walked along the road, her eyes were stung with scalding tears, her thoughts turbulent and rebellious! Why must he suffer such indignities from a man like Jim McCann! How dared a man, that was a man, taunt another like that! The hand holding her sun umbrella gripped the handle tightly, and through set teeth she said to herself: "I hate them all—hate them!"
The declining July sun was hot upon her; the road-bed, gleaming white with granite dust, blinded her. She looked about for some shelter where she could wait for the down car; there was none in sight, except the pines over by Father Honoré's and the sisterhood house an eighth of a mile beyond. She continued to stand there in the glare and the heat—miserable, dejected, rebellious, until the tram halted for her. The car was an open one; there was no other occupant. As it sped down the curving road to the lake shore, the breeze, created by its movement, was more than grateful to her. She took off her shade-hat to enjoy the full benefit of it.
At the switch, half way down, the tram waited for the up car. She could hear it coming from afar; the overhead wires vibrated to the extra power needed on the steep grade. It came in sight, crowded with workmen on their way home to Quarry End; the rear platform was black with them. It passed over the switch slowly, passed within two feet of her seat. She turned to look at it, wondering at its capacity for so many—and looked, instead, directly into the face of Champney Googe who stood on the lower step, his dinner-pail on his arm, the arm thrust through the guard.
At sight of her, so near him that the breath of each might have been felt on the cheek of the other, he raised his workman's cap—
She saw the gray head, the sudden pallor on brow and cheek, the deep, slightly sunken eyes fixed upon her as if on her next move hung the owner's hope of eternal life—the eyes moved with the slowly moving car to focus her....
To Aileen Armagh that face, changed as it was, was a glimpse of heaven on earth, and that heaven was reflected in the smile with which she greeted it. She did more:—unheeding the many faces that were turned towards her, she leaned from the car, her eyes following him, the love-light still radiating from her every feature, till he was carried beyond sight around the curving base of the Flamsted Hills.