“Certainly,” Miss Hortensia answered. “But I doubt if he will come any more. I hear in the village that his grandfather has gone away, quite away, to a milder part of the country. I can’t understand it, it seems so sudden.”
But Winfried did come, that very afternoon. His new home was not so very far away, he told Miss Hortensia with a smile. “Gran’s home, that is to say,” he went on. “But I myself am going to have a different kind of home now. I’m going to sea; I’ve always wished it, and gran has wished it for me.”
“But won’t he miss you terribly?” asked the lady. “I’ll often be with him, and he’s well cared for where he is,” said the boy.
And then Mavis took him up to see Bertrand, with whom she left him alone for some time.
There was a brighter look in the boy’s face when she went back to him.
“Winfried has promised to come again before he goes quite away,” he said. “Did you know, Mavis, that he is going ever so far away? He is going to be a sailor, a real sailor, not a fisherman. He says he has always wanted it, but he couldn’t leave his grandfather alone here where the village people were not—” Bertrand stopped suddenly, as it struck him that it was not the ignorant village people only who had been unkind to good old Adam. Mavis understood but said nothing. And after a bit Bertrand went out again.
“Mavis,” he said, “I’ve seen her again. Either I saw her or I dreamt of her. I don’t much mind which it was, for it’s all come true. She said I must try to bear it, like what you said, Mavis; and it has got better. But she said it would come back again, and that I’d get to want it to come back—at least, unless I wanted to forget her, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t think I could, even if I tried. And she kissed me—my eyes, Mavis; so you see I couldn’t forget her now.”
“You never could, I’m sure,” said Mavis; “that’s what she is; it’s her name.”
Bertrand threw himself back with a sigh.
“I can’t feel like you,” he said. “I’ve never thought about being good, and sometimes I think I won’t try. Oh Mavis!”