“You must not excite her, Hughie,” the mother whispered. But Hughie knew what he was about. He drew from under his jacket a queer, familiar figure. It was Mary Ann Jolly! There had been no rain, fortunately for her, during her exposure to the weather, and she was sturdy enough to have stood a few showers, even had there been any. She really looked in no way the worse for her adventure, as Hughie laid her gently down on the pillow beside Janet.
“It’s no one to excite her, mother,” he said. “It’s no stranger; only Mary Ann. She’s been away paying a visit to the fairies in the glen, and I think she must have enjoyed it. She’s looking as bonny as ever, and she was in no hurry to come home. I had to shout for her all over the glen before I could make her hear. Are you glad she’s come, Janet?”
Janet’s eyes were glistening. “O Hughie,” she whispered, “kiss me again. I can sleep so well now.”
The crisis no doubt had been passed before this, but still it is certain that Janet’s recovery was faster far than had been expected. And for this she and Hughie, and some of the elder ones, too, I fancy, gave the credit to the return of her favourite. Hughie was well rewarded for his several hours of patient searching in the glen; and I am happy to tell you that he did not catch the fever.
He would have been an elderly, almost an old man by now had he lived—good, kind Hughie. But that was not God’s will for him. He died long ago, in the prime of his youthful manhood; and it is to his little grand-nephews and nieces that wee Janet’s daughter has been telling this simple story of a long-ago little girl, and a long-ago doll, poor old Mary Ann Jolly!
Chapter Six.
Too Bad.
“It is the mynd that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore.”
Spenser.