Porteus Carmagee drew out his watch.
“In an hour, Kate, I will run over and see your husband. Oblige me by telling him not to look worried. Now, my dear girl, nonsense, you needn’t.”
Catherine had risen, and had put her hands upon his shoulders. And on that single and momentous occasion, Porteus Carmagee blushed as his bachelor face was touched by the lips of June.
The words of a friend in the dry season of trouble are like dew to the parched grass. Catherine left Porteus Carmagee’s office with a feeling of gratitude and relief, as though the sharing of her burden with him had eased her heart. From a feeling of forlorn impatience she sprang to a more sanguine and happy temper, with her gloomier forebodings left among the deeds and documents of the dusty office. She thought of her husband and her children without that wistful stirring of regret, that fear lest some store of evil were being laid up for them in the home she loved. Her reprieve was but momentary, had she but known it, for the cup of her humiliation was not full to the brim.
As she turned into Lombard Street, she came upon her two children returning with Mary from a ramble in the meadows. The youngsters raced for her, eyes aglow, health and the beauty thereof in every limb. The omen seemed propitious, the incident as sacred as Catherine could have wished. Perhaps to the two children her kisses seemed no less warm and heart-given than of yore, but to the mother the moment had a meaning that no earthly poetry could portray.
“Ah—my darlings—”
“Where have you been, muvver—where?”
“At Uncle Porteus’s. Mary, run around to Arnsbury’s and ask him to send me in some fruit. I will take the children home.”
Mary departed, leaving youth clinging to the maternal hands. Master Jack Murchison pranced like a war-horse, his curiosity still cantering towards Marley Down.
“Oh, I say, mother, when are we going to the cottage?”