All at once she started. 'Oh, Philip! What is that?'
A sound issued from the cradle. She ran to it, stooped and looked at her baby. The flashes of the firelight were reflected from the ceiling on the little face.
'Hark! oh, hark, Philip! Baby is laughing—laughing aloud in his sleep. He has never done that before. It is from very joy at being home—at his own dear home again.'
'What, Salome?—after Paris and Rome, the Alps, and the Rhine, poor old dirty, dingy Mergatroyd is dear?'
'To be sure it is, Philip—how can it be otherwise? And oh, Philip, how kind the people are! How pleased they all seem to see us back again. I thought—I really thought they would have shaken my hand off, and that old Fanshawe, the night-watch, would have kissed me, Philip. There may be more light-hearted, more picturesque, more romantic people in other lands, but there can be nowhere, not throughout the world, more true, warm-hearted, sterling folk, than our dear Yorkshire people. Do you not love them, Philip?'
'I have given Yorkshire the best proof of my attachment in taking to me a wife from thence.'
'Oh, Philip!'
Salome nestled to his side again by the window, and with him again looked forth silently into the night sky.
After a long pause Philip said, 'Hark!'
Through the still night air could be heard the church bell.