“No, no, Jack, she got well,” Geoffrey replied, but his own voice shook over the words.
“O-h! my girl!”
Jack Henly slipped from his chair, falling upon his knees beside his companion, while his head dropped a dead weight against his arm.
“Look here, my man,” Geoffrey now said, with gruff kindness, though he was nearly unmanned himself, “this isn’t going to do at all. You must brace up, for there is a long story to be told yet.”
He lifted him to his feet by main force, drew his arm within his own, and compelled him to walk up and down the porch two or three times. Then he seated him again, and began at once to tell poor Margery’s story.
The man listened as if spell-bound; he scarcely seemed to breathe, so intent was he to catch every word. He did not move, even, until Geoffrey mentioned meeting the strange woman in the wood, when he looked up, a wild gleam in his eye, a cry of joy on his lips.
When Geoffrey repeated what she had told him about her traveling from city to city, searching for her husband, working at whatever her hand could find to do, to earn the money necessary to keep up her tireless quest, he could control himself no longer. Great sobs broke from him.
“My girl! my girl! I never deserved it of her! Where is she, Master Geoffrey? tell me and I’ll creep on my knees to her feet and ask her forgiveness!” he wildly cried.
“Jack, she is here!”
“Here! Where?” and he glanced about him in fear and awe.