In the room within Miss Charlotte Carlaw had paused for a moment with her hands stretched out gropingly. ’Linda came timidly toward her. “Where are you, child?” asked the old woman; and then their hands met and they drew close together. Perhaps it was the touch of a woman’s hand that ’Linda needed just then; she suddenly found herself drawing close to the strange old figure, and for the first time her tears began to flow.
“Let’s make a new beginning, child,” said Miss Carlaw softly. “And, for both our sakes, will you promise me never to speak of what is past and ended, never to refer to any one we both knew? Will you promise that?”
“Yes, I promise,” whispered the girl.
They came out together presently into the shop; the captain stood waiting to conduct them to the carriage. Medmer Theed still hammered softly on his leather. The girl went up to the shoemaker and put an arm about his neck and whispered his name; he looked up at her with a vacant expression, and she kissed him and murmured some broken words of thanks. He nodded his head slowly and went on with his work. He was still hammering when the carriage drove away, the captain standing bareheaded in the street, looking after them.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MEDMER MELTS A SILVER SPOON.
It was a clear, crisp November evening, with a touch of frost in the air, and the captain sat in his little parlour before a tiny fire, staring into the coals. Behind him on the table a candle, burning in a tall, old-fashioned candle-stick, threw a giant round-shouldered shadow of the captain on the wall and part of the ceiling of the room. Two years had gone by since the captain stood outside Medmer Theed’s shop and watched the carriage roll away—two years during which he had aged a little more, and had gone but little beyond the confines of his garden.
To-night he sat and stared into the coals and thought a little wistfully of the past, and wondered a little what had become of the figures that had acted out their lives in close contact with his—some of them, indeed, in that very room. He thought of the tiny child hugging a puppy in its arms, standing outside his gate looking up at him with big, frightened eyes; remembered sunny Sunday mornings when that child had sat beside him in the big pew in church. He sighed at last, and moved restlessly in his chair and turned his head to look round the familiar room.
There was a sudden sound of hesitating steps upon the gravel outside, and then a cautious lifting of the latch. The captain twisted in his chair and rose to his feet, picked up the candle from the table, and opened the door of the room. In the shadows of the little hallway he saw a man standing.