For the first time since the dark day in Brindley Wood, I meet him without embarrassment. I answer him: I even address him now and then.
All the small civilizations of life—the flower-garnished table; the lamps softly burning; the evening-dresses (for the first time we have dressed for dinner)—fill me with a keen pleasure, that I should have thought such little etceteras were quite incapable of affording.
I seem as if I could not speak without broad smiles. I am tired, indeed, still, and my eyes are heavy. But what does that matter? Life has won! Life has won! We are still all six here!
"Nancy!" says the Brat, regarding me with an eye of friendly criticism, "I think you are cracked to-night!—Do you remember what our nurses used to tell us? 'Much laughing always ends in much crying.'"
But I do not heed: I laugh on. Barbara is not nearly so boisterously merry as I, but then she never is. She is more overdone with fatigue than I, I think; for she speaks little—though what she does say is full of content and gladness—and there are dark streaks of weariness and watching under the serene violets of her eyes. She is certainly very tired; as we go to bed at night she seems hardly able to get up the stairs, but leans heavily on the banisters—one who usually runs so lightly up and down.
Yes, very tired, but what of that? it would be unnatural, most unnatural if she were not; she will be all right to-morrow, after a good long night's rest—yes, all right. I say this to her, still gayly laughing as I give her my last kiss, and she smiles and echoes, "All right!"
CHAPTER XLIX.
"So mayst thou die, as I do; fear and pain
Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!"