The girl laughed loud and shrilly. "Ah! ah!" she cried after them. "The good gentleman! the brave fellow! For this I would follow you! aye! follow you, my lad, from Belton to Tyburn Hill!"
CHAPTER IV.
"It is then true, my Betty? And I am to wish you joy?" cried Mary Jones, with both hands outstretched.
"It is true," answered Betty, her lips parted in a smile of sunshiny happiness. "Congratulate me, Mary; yes, wish me joy, for there is no happier woman to-day between the Northern and Southern seas."
"I am glad to see you so happy, dear child!" cried Mary affectionately, but there was something pinched and starved in her voice. Ah, pity for those who possess the capacity for love and yet must go hungry to their dying day!
This odd want is none the less bitter that it meets with scant sympathy in this hard world. In the breast of many an unsought woman lies a wealth of wasted treasure, treasure which no one has cared to seek, and yet what a treasure it might have been!
Mary Jones's heart had grown somewhat starved, but it was the heart of a loving woman still, and when the bright sunshine of her young friend's happiness shed its light on her soul, it awakened an echo of old dead days, and swelled it with sympathy.
"Sit down, sweet one," she said, drawing Betty down on the sofa beside her. "Tell me all about it. When did he ask you to be his wife?"
"This morning, Mary, only this morning; but it seems as if years had passed since then."