"I've as good a notion to turn round and go straight home again as ever I had to eat!" muttered Mrs. Ducklow.
"It's too late now," said her husband, advancing with a show of confidence and cordiality he did not feel. "Wal, Reuben! glad to see ye! glad to see ye! This is a joyful day I scurce ever expected to see! Why, ye don't look so sick as I thought ye would! Does he, mother?"
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Ducklow, her woman's nature, and perhaps her old motherly feelings for their adopted son, deeply moved by the sight of his changed and wasted aspect. "I'd no idee he could be so very, so very pale and thin! Had you, Sophrony?"
"I don't know what I thought," said the young wife, standing by, watching her returned volunteer with features surcharged with emotion,—deep suffering and sympathy, suffused and lighted up by love and joy. "I only know I have him now! He has come home! He shall never leave me again,—never!"
"But wasn't it terrible to see him brought home so?" whispered Mrs. Ducklow.
"Yes, it was! But, oh, I was so thankful! I felt the worst was over; and I had him again! I can nurse him now. He is no longer hundreds of miles away, among strangers, where I cannot go to him,—though I should have gone long ago, as you know, if I could have raised the means, and if it hadn't been for the children."
"I—I—Mr. Ducklow would have tried to help you to the means, and I would have taken the children, if we had thought it best for you to go," said Mrs. Ducklow. "But you see now it wasn't best, don't you?"
"Whether it was or not, I don't complain. I am too happy to-day to complain of anything. To see him home again! But I have dreamt so often that he came home, and woke up to find it was only a dream, I'm half afraid now to be as happy as I might be."
"Be as happy as you please, Sophrony!" spoke up Reuben, who had seemed to be listening to Mr. Ducklow's apologies for not coming over the night before, while he was in reality straining his ear to catch every word his wife was saying. He was dressed in his uniform and lying on a lounge, supported by pillows. "I'm just where I want to be, of all places in this world,—or the next world either, I may say; for I can't conceive of any greater heaven than I'm in now. I'm going to get well, too, spite of the doctors. Coming home is the best medicine for a fellow in my condition. Not bad to take, either! Stand here, Ruby, my boy, and let yer daddy look at ye again! To think that's my Ruby, Pa Ducklow! Why, he was a mere baby when I went away!"
"Reuben! Reuben!" entreated the young wife, leaning over him, "you are talking too much. You promised me you wouldn't, you know."