"Rose, you darling!" I ejaculated, "come and kiss me this minute, and show me which particular cloud has dropped you at my feet! My dear girl, you have stunned me, and I feel that I must pinch you to see if you are really flesh and blood."
"If there is to be any pinching, my dear Grace, I prefer to do it. It will prove my corporeal existence just as conclusively, and be less painful—to me. So this is Windyridge?"
"Rose!" I exclaimed, "for goodness' sake don't be so absurdly practical and commonplace, but tell me why you have come, and where you are staying, and how everybody is at old Rusty's, and how long you are going to be in the north, and all about yourself, and—and—everything."
"All that will take time," replied Rose calmly, as she removed her gloves; "but I will answer the more important parts of your questions. I am staying here, with you. If you are very nice and kind to me you will press me to remain ten days with you, and I shall yield to pressure, after the customary formal and insincere protests. Then you will put on your hat and walk with me down to Fawkshill station, and as there are no cabs to be had there we will bring up my bag between us."
"That we need not do," I said. "There are half a dozen strong boys in the village, any one of whom would fetch your belongings for love of me and threepence of your money."
"Happy Grace!" she sighed; "'love rules the court, the camp, the grove,' as saith the poet. Be it even so. Summon the favoured swain, discharge his debt, and I will be in thine."
"Rose! Rose! you are the same incorrigible, pert, saucy girl as of yore, but you have filled my heart with joy. I am treading on air and giddy with delight. We will have ten days of undiluted rapture. Come inside and look round my home. Mother Hubbard is 'meeting for tickets' to-night, and will not be back for a good half-hour."
"Meeting for what?" inquired Rose blankly.
"Meeting for tickets," I repeated. "My dear old lady is a Methodist class leader, and to 'meet for tickets' is a shibboleth beyond your untutored comprehension. But the occasion is one of vast importance to her, and you are not to make fun of her."
She was pleased with everything and expressed her pleasure readily. In spite of her composed manner she is a very dear girl indeed, and though she is years younger than I am she and I always hit it exactly. When she saw the tiny bed and realised that we should have to share it she laughed merrily.