With cheerful protestations Grannie helped her back to bed, and then went off with an anxious face to tell Cæsar that she was more ill than ever.
She was ill indeed; but her worst illness was of the heart. “If I go to him and tell him,” she thought, “he will marry me—yes. No fear that he will leave me at the church door or elsewhere. He will stay with me. We will be man and wife to the last. The world will know nothing. But I will know. As long as I live I will remember that he only sacrificed himself to repair a fault That shall never be—never, never!”
Cæsar came up in great alarm. He seemed to be living in hourly dread that some obstacle would arise at the last moment to stop the marriage. “Chut, woman!” he said play-. fully. “Have a good heart, Kitty. The sun's not going down on you yet at all.”
That night there were loud voices from the bar-room. The talk was of the marriage which had taken place in the morning, and of its strange and painful sequel. John the Clerk was saying, “But you'd be hearing of the by-child, it's like?”
“Never a word,” said somebody.
“Not heard of it, though? Fetching the child to the wedding to have the bad name taken off it—no? They were standing the lil bogh—-it's only three—two is it, Grannie, only two?—well, they were standing the lil thing under its mother's perricut while the sarvice was saying.”
“You don't say!”
“Aw, truth enough, sir! It's the ould Manx way of legitimating. The parsons are knowing nothing of it, but I've seen it times.”
“John's right,” said Mr. Jelly; “and I can tell you more—it was just that the man went to church for.”
“Wouldn't trust,” said John the Clerk. “The woman wasn't getting much of a husband out of it anyway.”