Just then a child's silvery voice was heard in the street beneath. The blithe call was—
"Sweet violets and primroses the sweetest."
The little feet tripped under the window. The loom stopped, and they listened. Then Christian looked into the young woman's face, and blinding tears rose on the instant into the eyes of both.
"Mona!" he cried, in low passionate tones, and opened his arms. There was an unspeakable language in her face. She turned her head toward him longingly, yearningly, with heaving breast. He took one step toward her. She drew back. "No—not yet!" His arms fell, and he turned away.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Then the voice of Kerruish Kinvig could be heard in the outer factory.
"I've been middling long," he said, hurrying in, "but a man, a bailiff from England, came bothering about some young waistrel that I never heard of in my born days—had run away from his debts, and so on—had been traced to the Isle of Man, and on here to Peel. And think of that tomfool of a Tommy-Bill-beg sending the man to me. I bowled him off to your father."
"My father!" exclaimed Christian, who had listened to Kinvig's rambling account with an uneasy manner.
"Yes, surely, and the likeliest man too. What's a magistrate for at all if private people are to be moidered like yonder? But come, I'll show you the sweet action of this loom in unwinding. Look now—see—keep your eye on those hooks."
And Kerruish Kinvig rattled on with his explanation to a deaf ear.