“I’m going!” he whispered; and the words sung themselves to the rhythm of rapture unalloyed.
“Et puis, m’sieu?” said Berthe, breathlessly, from the doorway.
CHAPTER II.
The case of the old-fashioned watch snapped together for the fortieth time in John Carrington’s restless hands, and he sighed impatiently.
Not since those days of dread loneliness after his wife’s death, when he had first sent the children abroad, had time dragged so rackingly.
His leonine, iron-gray head moved irritably among the pillows of the bed where he had been “caged,” as he called it, for three interminable weeks.
Mrs. Kipley, tidying up the room with an accentuation of her usual briskness, gave him as indulgent a look as the formation of her rigid cast of countenance would permit.
“Wearin’ out your watch case won’t hurry up that train none,” she observed, as she straightened a china cat on the mantel into an expectant attitude.
It had been her gift the previous Christmas to John Carrington, and her admiration of it extended to the hope that it would pleasingly impress the returning traveler.
“Miss Elenore was fondest of animals, though,” she murmured, absently.