“Where have you been, Dick? Where have you been all these years?” asked the Judge, in a hoarse voice; and holding his father’s trembling hands in his, Richard repeated, in substance, what the reader has already heard, asking if neither of his letters were received.
“Yes, one; telling me you were going to India,” returned the Judge; “but I hadn’t forgiven you then for marrying Hetty Kirby, and I would not answer it; but I’ve forgiven you now, boy,—I’ve forgiven you now, for that marriage has been the means of the greatest happiness I ever experienced. It gave Gipsy to me. Where is Mildred, Richard? Why don’t she come to see her granddad?”
“She’s upstairs, tissin’ a man,” interposed little Edith, who had just entered the room, her brown eyes protruding like marbles, as if utterly confounded with what they had beheld. “She is,” she continued, as Oliver tried to hush her: “I seen her, and he tissed her back just as loud as THAT!” and by way of illustration she smacked her own fat hand.
“Come here, you mischief!” and catching her before she was aware of his intention, the delighted Judge threw her higher than his head, asking her to tell him again “how Mildred tissed the man.”
But Edith was not yet inclined to talk with him, and so we will explain how it happened that Mildred was with Lawrence. After leaving her father, her first visit was to her own room, which she found occupied by Lilian, who, having a slight headache, had retired early, and was fast asleep. Not caring to awaken her, Mildred turned back, and seeing the door of Lawrence’s chamber ajar, could not forbear stealing on tiptoe toward it, thinking that the sound of his breathing would be better than nothing. While she stood there listening she heard him whisper, “Mildred,” for he was thinking of her, and unconsciously he repeated the dear name. In an instant she forgot everything, and springing to his side, wound her arms around his neck, sobbing in his ear:
“Dear, dear Lawrence, I’ve come back to you, and we shall not be parted again. It is all a fraud,—a wicked lie. I am not Mildred Hawley,—I am Mildred Howell,—Richard’s child. He’s down-stairs, Lawrence. My own father is in the house. Do you hear?”
He did hear, and comprehended it too, but for some moments he could only weep over her and call her his “darling Milly.” Then, when more composed, he listened while she told him what she knew, interspersing her narrative with the kisses which had so astonished Edith and sent her with the wondrous tale to the drawing-room, from which she soon returned, and marching this time boldly up to Mildred, said:
“That big man says you mustn’t tiss him any more,” and she looked askance at Lawrence, who laughed aloud at the little creature’s attitude and manner.
“This is to be your brother,” said Mildred, and lifting Edith up, she placed her on the bed with Lawrence, who kissed her chubby cheeks and called her “little sister.”
“You’ve growed awfully up in heaven,” said Edith, mistaking him for the boy-baby who had died with her mother, for in no other way could she reconcile the idea of a brother.