The white moonlight is flooding the land when at length they retire to rest. Ruby’s dreams are all of her new-found friend whom she is so soon to lose, and when she is awakened by the sunlight of the newer morning streaming in upon her face a rush of gladness and of sorrow strive hard for mastery in her heart—gladness because Jack is still here, sorrow because he is going away.
Her father is to ride so far with the traveller upon his way, and Ruby stands with dim eyes at the garden-gate watching them start.
“Good-bye, little Ruby red,” Jack Kirke says as he stoops to kiss her. “Remember next Christmas, and remember the new dolly I’m to send you when I get home.”
“Good-bye, Jack,” Ruby whispers in a choked voice. “I’ll always remember you; and, Jack, if there’s any other little girl in Scotland you’ll perhaps like better than me, I’ll try not to mind very much.”
Jack Kirke twirls his moustache and smiles. There is another little girl in the question, a little girl whom he has known all her life, and who is all the world to her loyal-hearted lover. The only question now at issue is as to whether Jack Kirke is all the world to the woman whom, he has long since decided, like Geraint of old, is the “one maid” for him.
Then the two riders pass out into the sunshine, Jack Kirke with a last look back and a wave of the hand for the desolate little blue figure left standing at the gate.
“Till next Christmas, Ruby!” his voice rings out cheerily, and then they are gone, through a blaze of sunlight which shines none the dimmer because Ruby sees it through a mist of tears.
It is her first remembered tasting of that most sorrowful of all words, “Good-bye,” a good-bye none the less bitter that the “good morning” came to her but in yesterday’s sunshine. It is not always those whom we have known the longest whom we love the best.
Even the thought of the promised new doll fails to comfort the little girl in this her first keenest sorrow of parting. For long she stands at the gate, gazing out into the sunlight, which beats down hotly upon her uncovered head.
“It’s only till next Christmas anyway,” Ruby murmurs with a shadowy attempt at a smile. “And it won’t be so very long to pass.”