"Jennie," he answered, hesitatingly, as if it was an effort for him to collect his thoughts.
"We have lost our mother—ours," she said, tremulously, and lowered her head, weeping.
He hastily arose, and his arm clasped her shoulder with brotherly affection. It seemed to him the only way to comfort her. She did not resist him, and they sorrowed together.
Cornelius McVeigh did not hasten away from the scene of his great sorrow. To tell the truth, he had lost for the time being his craving for the bustling of the city and the subdued activity of his office. In the place of the latter came hours of quiet, apathetic reverie while he lingered beneath the roof-tree of home. He modified his dress and waylaid sundry travellers who passed the door in lumbering farm wagons. Ofttimes he clambered aboard and went a-visiting, and in exchange for his city stories received tales of the Monk Road and his mother that were as balm to his wounded heart.
Jennie was also loath to leave the peaceful spot. Her grandparent, who found a new joy in living because of his affection for her, came to the neighboring hotel and hired a suite of rooms for an indefinite period. He proved a worthy comrade in idleness for the jaded business man, and the three of them, Jennie, Cornelius McVeigh and Mr. Hyden, were always together.
Jennie had been an apt pupil, and the few years of education which her grandparent had provided for her had transformed her from an uncultivated country girl into an accomplished young woman. Nor was she lacking in comeliness. Ofttimes the eyes of Cornelius McVeigh followed her with a strange light glistening in their depths.
The boy and girl love of years gone by, so prematurely blighted and so long dormant, was struggling again to the surface, and who knows but another wedding, the last of so many which have been recorded in the previous chapters, may yet be an accomplished fact? But that involves another story, and it has not the presence of Nancy McVeigh.