"Softly, little man, softly!" spoke Neville's voice. "Run into the house and fetch pillows for thy mother's head."
Slowly Elinor's mind awakened to the scene around. So this, after all, was not the pale reflection of earth cast upon the clouds of a shadowy after-life, but Heaven itself come down to earth. Love and life lay before, not behind. Too weary to question the causes of the miracle, she accepted it and thanked God.
"My dear!" she said simply, raising her arms and laying them about Neville's neck. The effort of speech was too much for her strength, and she fell back exhausted and so white that Neville laid his hand anxiously upon her heart.
"Tell me all!" she murmured.
Neville laughed, a natural hearty laugh, for the first time since that terrible day in January. "So," he said, "'tis curiosity alone can prick thee back to life. Well, thou shalt have the story. All there is to tell, as soon as thou canst bear it. Now, let us in." And raising her in his arms he carried her to the settle where Cecil was piling the cushions.
As she sank into them, she laid her hand on the rebellious curls of her boy.
"Poor baby!" she whispered.
"Baby! 'Tis no baby thou hadst thought me, Mother, hadst thou seen me wrestling with Ralph Ingle? But he would not fight fair, and he had my arms pinioned when Thir Chrithtopher met us."
"So, in addition to all my other debts, 'tis to thee I owe my son," said Elinor, turning with a new tenderness in her eyes to Neville.
"Why, in a fashion, yes."