“Why don't you speak to me, Barney? You haven't said a word except just 'Iola, Iola, Iola.' Haven't you anything else to say, sir? After your long silence you might—” She raised her head and looked into his eyes with her old saucy smile.
“There is nothing to say, Iola. What need to speak when I can hold you like this? But you must not talk too much.”
“Tell me something about yourself,” she cried. “What? Where? How? Why? No, not why. I don't want that, but all the rest.”
“It is hardly worth while, Iola,” he replied, “and it would take a long time.”
“Oh, yes, think what a delicious long time. All the time there is. All the day and every day. Oh, Barney! does one want more Heaven than this? Tell me about Margaret and—yes—and Dick,” she shyly added. “Are they well and happy?”
“Now, darling,” said Barney, stroking her hair; “just rest there and I'll tell you everything. But you must not exhaust yourself.”
“Go on then, Barney,” she replied with a sigh of ineffable bliss, nestling down again. “Oh, lovely rest!”
Then Barney told her of Margaret and Dick and of their last few days together, making light of Dick's injury and making much of the new joy that had come to them all. “And it was your letter that did it all, Iola,” he said.
“No,” she replied gently, “it was our Father's goodness. I see things so differently, Barney. Lady Ruthven has taught me. She is an angel from Heaven, and, oh, what she has done for me!”
“I, too, Iola, have great things to be thankful for.”