“Ah, he’s quite taken my place, I see. Now, old girl, I’m only joking. There!” Dick lifted the baby again, and laid it carefully in Georgia’s arms; “you hold him, and let me look at you both.”
Mabel, in the meantime, was sobbing in a corner of the verandah. Her tears were purely tears of joy, but her attitude, as she sat crouched on the floor (for the boxes which had once served as seats were now a portion of the breastwork), was desolate enough to melt the heart of any sympathetic spectator. So, at least, it seemed to Fitz, who came hurrying through the passage, and pulled up, in astonishment and alarm, just in time to avoid stumbling over her.
“What is it, Miss North? Anything wrong?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh no; it’s only—that I’m so—happy,” said Mabel, between her sobs. “I came here to be out of the way,” she added, rising with all the dignity she could muster, and shaking the dust from her skirts, “but it seems impossible to find a place where one can be by oneself.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. Please don’t let me interrupt you. I only came to ask when the Major would like to see the men. They are wild to welcome him back. If you will just ask him, I’ll go away directly.”
“I won’t disturb him and Georgia now,” said Mabel. “If the men come in an hour’s time, I’ll tell him before that, and he will be ready to see them.”
“Oh, thanks.” He turned to go, then hesitated a moment, and came back. “I want just to say one thing, Miss North—about that promise you gave me.”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Mabel hysterically. “You haven’t treated me fairly about it. It’s cruel to keep such a thing hanging over me, so that I am in terror whenever I see you.”
“Why, what a low brute you must have thought me! But really I didn’t mean to be such an out-and-out cad as all that. I thought you knew me better—and I did try to show you what I meant. You couldn’t imagine that I would hold you to a promise which I practically forced you to make?”
“Oh!” said Mabel. An unprejudiced listener would have said that she had not only expected but desired to be held to her promise. But Fitz was not unprejudiced, and he went on earnestly.