“Allow me to say Ta-ta!
I bid you good-day. Ta-ta!
I wish I could stay,
But I’m going away.
Allow me to say Ta-ta!”
Amid the uproarious laughter of everyone in the room, she had bounded away to supper.
Except for one moment, when she was leaving the house for home, and he had helped her on with her cloak, the pastor had not spoken again directly to her that evening. He had managed then to whisper,
“God bless you, my darling! I shall pray for you, and live on the hope I read in your eyes to-night.”
It was all this which had risen so strangely before her mind, as to-night, on that hotel balcony, she had begun to ask herself how much she really cared for Tom Hammond, and what answer she would have given him had he proposed to her that afternoon.