"When we were alone together that night—for I waited downstairs to say good-night to him, while Deborah stayed with Carrie—he suddenly drew me toward him and looked in my face.
"Poor child," he said, tenderly, "it is time I came home to relieve you; you have grown a visionary, unsubstantial Esther, with large eyes and a thin face; but somehow I never liked the look of you so well."
That made me smile. "Oh, Allan, how nice it is to have you with me again!"
"Nice! I should think so; what walks we will have, by the bye. I mean to have Carrie downstairs before a week is over; what is the good of you both moping upstairs? I shall alter all that."
"She is too weak too move," I returned, dubiously.
"But she is not too weak to be carried. You are keeping her too quiet, and she wants rousing a little; she feeds too much on her own thoughts, and it is bad for her; she is such a little saint, you know," continued Allan, half jestingly, "she wants to be leavened a little with our wickedness.
"She is good; you would say so if you heard her."
"Not a bit more good than some other people—Miss Ruth, for example;" but I could see from his mischievous eyes that he was not thinking of Ruth. How well and handsome he was looking: he had grown broader, and there was an air of manliness about him—"my bonnie lad," as I called him.
I went to bed that night with greater contentment in my heart, because Allan had come home; and even Carrie seemed cheered by the hopeful view he had taken of her case.
"He thinks, perhaps, that after some years I may not be quite so helpless," she whispered, as I said good-night to her, and her face looked composed and quiet in the fading firelight; "anyhow, I mean to bear it as well as I can, and not give you more trouble."