The first surprise over, the joy of that moment was beyond the gift of speech. Her arms encircled his neck, and she looked up at his face in silence and with brightening eyes.
"And so you found the time long and tedious?" he said.
"I had no one to talk to," she said, with a blank expression.
"Why, you ungrateful little thing! you had good Mrs. Drayton here, and her son, and all the smart young fellows of Hendon who came to drink at the bar and say pretty things to the little bar-maid, and—"
"It's not that—I had no one who knew you," she said, and dropped her voice to a whisper.
"But you go out sometimes—into the village—to London?" he said.
"No, I never go out—never now."
"Then your eyes are really worse?"
"It's not my eyes. But, never mind. Oh, I knew you would not forget me. Only sometimes of an evening, when the dusk fell in, and I sat by the fire all alone, something would say, 'He doesn't want me,' 'He won't come for me.' But that was not true, was it?"
"Why, no; of course not."