“Did you see the set of his shoulders as he left the house?” demanded her brother, and then, without waiting for a reply, he continued: “You can’t fool me. I know the signs of the zodiac. It’s the full of the moon, that part of the month when it gets into a fellow’s blood, and he forgets everything except that here is the one being he loves. Why, Stella, I’d have been infected with that same fever every full moon for forty years, if I hadn’t been vaccinated.”
Mrs. Malloy laughed heartily, and then he said, more earnestly: “Robert will be a lucky man to win that girl. I’ve known her for so long, and have been so fond of her, that nothing but my age prevents my stepping in now and interfering with Robert. The first time I ever saw her,” he continued reminiscently, “she was a mere child, a quaint red-headed little thing, with a world of tragedy in her big eyes. That was a few months after she had lost her father. She had replied to a question of her aunt’s, simply ‘yes,’—and Mrs. Weston was striving to make her say ‘yes, ma’am.’”
“Which won?” Mrs. Malloy asked idly.
“I don’t know. The last I saw of them they were walking down the street, Mrs. Weston dragging her along and saying, ‘You won’t say “Yes, ma’am,” to me! Well, I’ll teach you some manners if you live with me!’ But as I have never since heard Meg say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I have an idea that she won the day.”
When Robert returned, he sought his mother and said briefly: “Another hand than mine has turned the boat back into the still waters of the monastery. My novitiate begins in six weeks. Let us leave here in a few days, that we may spend the remainder of the time alone together.”
All the glory had departed from her face, and she only nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
“Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he
shall have abundance; but from him that hath not
shall be taken away even that which he hath.”