"Oh, yes—yes!" she whispers back, with sparkling eyes. "Why should I not be? You are so very k—"
He blocks the sentence with a kiss.
"You need not have been in such a hurry," she laughs. "How do you know I was going to say that, after all? There are lots of other adjectives beginning with a 'k,' besides 'kind.' Let me see—'kantankerous,' for instance—"
"Hem! When I was at school, 'cantankerous' began with a 'c,' Mistress Addie."
"Oh, dear! I won't try repartee again, no matter how grievous the assault. Tom, what a valuable governess you robbed the Moggeridges of! You owe them compensation, sir."
A faint breeze brings to them a few bars of one of the sweetest, saddest love-songs ever written. Addie's voice drops; she says, scarcely above her breath—
"And you, Tom—are you happy too?"
"Happier, dear, than I ever thought I could be, even in my wildest dreams of matrimonial bliss. I've had you only a fortnight, little wife, and yet I don't know how I did without you during all the past years, or what life would be to me it you went from me now."
"I have no immediate intention of going," she remarks, rubbing her soft cheek against his coat-sleeve.
"No, you're bound for life now, thank Heaven!" he says fervently. "And, when I think of the many times I have been within an ace of losing you, child, of throwing the whole thing up and letting you go, I rejoice in possessing the gift of pig-headedness, and—"