“I know that this is Roger’s room,” Magdalen said, and a vague desire seized her that he might receive Millbank from her there.
Old Hester Floyd had finished her work and was about to “tidy herself up a little,” when a rustling movement at the door attracted her attention, and she turned to find Magdalen standing there, her dark eyes bright as diamonds, her cheeks flushed and burning with excitement, her lips apart and her hands clasped together, as she bent slightly forward across the kitchen threshold. With a scream, Hester bounded toward her, and dragging her into the room, exclaimed, “Magdalen, Magdalen, I knew it, I knew it. I said something was going to happen when the rooster crowed so this morning,—somebody going to come; but I did not dream of you, Magdalen, oh! Magdalen.” She kept repeating the name, and with her hard, rough hands held and rubbed the soft white fingers she had clasped; then, as the joy kept growing, she sobbed aloud and broke down entirely.
“Oh! Magdalen,” she said, “I am so glad for him. He has wanted you and missed you all the time, though he never mentioned your name.”
Something in the face or manner of the younger woman must have communicated itself to the mind of the elder, for Magdalen had given no reason for her sudden appearance at Schodick, or sign of what she meant to do. But Hester took her coming as a good omen for Roger, and kept repeating, “I’m so glad, so glad for Roger.”
“How do you know he wants me, if, as you say, he never mentions my name?” Magdalen asked, and Hester replied, “How do we know the sun shines when we can’t hear it? We can see and feel, can’t we? And so I know you ain’t long out of Roger’s mind, and ain’t been since we moved here, and he brung the candle-box cradle with him just because you once slept in it.”
“Did Roger do that? Did he bring my cradle from Millbank? Why didn’t you tell me before?” Magdalen asked, her eyes shining with tears of joy at this proof of Roger’s love.
“I thought I did write it to you,” Hester replied; “I meant to, but might of forgot but he brought it by express; and it’s upstairs now, and in it—”
Hester stopped abruptly, thinking it might be premature to speak of the cribby quilt, which did not now stand so good a chance of reaching the heathen as it had done one hour before.
“Where is Roger?” Magdalen asked, and Hester told her of the headache he had complained of ever since the day of the sale, adding, “He’s in his room, which is fixed up as nice as anybody’s; his books and pictures and a little recess for his bed, just like any gentleman.”