"Yes," said Alfred, going to the door and opening it, "that's my mother and the girls. Come here, mother; here's Jerry O'Brien."
"Your mother and my girl," said Jerry, down low in his heart. "'Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is.' Romeo is the most contemptible figure in all history, and Juliet the most adorable." Aloud he said at that moment: "And you, Miss Paulton--how are you?"
"Quite well, thank you."
"What a low blackguard," he thought, "Shakespeare was to kill Juliet! But he killed Romeo, too, and that may have justified him in the eyes of heaven. I'd forgive him even his rhyming couplets if he'd only turn his tragic attention to those accursed Commissioners. Just fancy a lot of apoplectic fools, bursting, so to speak, with the want of knowledge of anything, and standing between that darling and me! May the maledictions of----" To Madge he said aloud, in answer to her question: "Yes, I had a very good passage across--not a ripple on the water. You have never been across?"
"No, never. I should very much like to go," she said, as she sat down on a chair, adjusted her mantle, and looked up in his face.
"Oh, you ought to go over," he said; "the scenery is romantic."
He thought "romantic" might be too strong for Mrs. Paulton, so he added hastily:
"And the garden produce--owing," he added, in explanation, "to the humidity of the climate."
He felt rather foolish, and that he had been saying very foolish things. But then he didn't care. He did not want to shine before her: she was the beacon of his hope.
"Perhaps," she said, looking up, "father might take us over next summer, or the summer after."