A few weeks afterward, one night Bridget came home with a face perfectly radiant, or “bamin,” as she would have said. I was reading in my bed-room all alone. She came in, closed Aunt Mary’s door, and giving me a letter, said,
“Rade it, dear Miss Enna, rade it; he’s alive, and is comin’ home;” and she sat down on the rug beside me, and laughed and cried at once as I read the letter aloud to her.
Sure enough, the lover was safe and true. He had written to her often, but the letters had been lost, he supposed, as he had never heard from her; but he felt sure, he said, that she was still his Bridget, even if he did not hear from her.
“There, you see, Miss Enna, how bad I’d been if I’d done as they wanted me to,” she exclaimed; “and so Father Shane said to mother to-night, when he read the beautiful letter—for he brought it to me. Patrick writ to him, and sint him this letter to me inside of his’n, bekase he said he’d writ so often to me, and sure a letter would rach me through Father Shane.”
Patient Reader, this is a true story; but I am the only one to be sympathized with in it, for I lost my jewel of a chambermaid. A few months afterward Patrick came home and claimed his faithful Bridget. We had a busy time when she was married—for the whole family took an interest in good Bridget’s fortune. Patrick was a nice, healthy, bright-looking Irishman; and when on the Sunday after he arrived he came to take her to mass, I saw him as they walked down the street together, look at her sturdy little figure with as much admiration as if it had possessed the fine proportions of a Venus. Love is such a beautifier.
Father Shane married them, and Patrick rented a nice little house in the suburbs of our town, and took Widow Kerevan home to live with them. Bridget is a happy wife; but she has one trouble, and that is, that her husband’s calling takes him away from her, and places him in danger; but when he returns from long voyages she is as bright and merry as a lark.
The other day I went to see her, and as her little girl Elsie came nestling close to me, Bridget said,
“Ever since that child was born, Miss Enna, I feel that my blessed darlint has come back to me. Och, but He’s been kind to me,” she said, blessing herself with devotion, “for He give me back both Patrick and Elsie.”
Good girl! God had indeed been kind to her, for he had bestowed upon her those priceless gifts of the spirit—Faith and Truth.