Well, it was a long and a weary waiting. She seemed, too, content with her feeble state; there were so many who were kind to her; and her father sending her messages from London; and Quiney coming every morning to put some little things—branches of evergreens, or the like, when flowers were no longer to be had—in the little basket outside the window. He could reach to that easily; and when she happened to hear his footsteps coming near, even when she could not see him, she would tap with her white fingers on the window-panes—that was her thanks to him, and morning greeting.
It was a bitter winter, and ever they were looking forward to the milder weather, to see when they might risk taking her out-of-doors, swathed up in her chariot, as she called it; but the weeks and weeks went by, hard and obdurate, and at last they found themselves in the new year. But she could get about the house a little now, in a quiet way; and so it was that, one morning, she and Quiney were together standing at the front window, looking abroad over the wide white landscape. Snow lay everywhere, thick and silent; the bushes were heavy with it; and far beyond those ghostly meadows, though they could not see it they knew that the Avon was fixed and hard in its winter sleep, under the hanging banks of the Wier Brake.
"'Western wind, when will you blow?'" she said, and yet not sadly, for there was a placid look in her eyes: she was rather complaining, with a touch of the petulance of the Judith of old.
The arm of her lover was resting lightly on her shoulder—she was strong enough to bear that now, and she did not resent the burden; and she had got her soft sunny-brown curls again, though still they were rather short; and her face had got back something of its beautiful curves; and her eyes, if they were not so cruelly audacious as of old, were yet clear-shining and gentle, and with abundance of kind messages for all the world, but with tenderer looks for only one.
"'Western wind,'" she repeated, with that not over-sad complaint of injury, "'when will you blow—when will you blow?'"
"All in good time, sweetheart, all in good time," said he; and his hand lay kindly on her shoulder, as if she were one to whom some measure of gentle tending and cheering words were somewhat due. "And guess you now what they mean to do for you when the milder weather comes? I mean the lads at the school. Why, then, 'tis a secret league and compact—I doubt not that your cousin Willie may have been at the suggesting of it—but 'twas some of the bigger lads who came to me. And 'tis all arranged now, and all for the sake of you, dear heart. For when the milder weather comes, and the year begins to wake again, why, they are all of them to keep a sharp and eager eye here and there—in the lanes or in the woods—for the early peeping up of the primroses; and then 'tis to be a grand whole holiday that I am to get for them, as it appears; and all the school is to go forth to search the hedge-rows and the woods and the banks—all the country-side is to be searched and searched—and for what, think you? why, to bring you a spacious basketful of the very first primroses of the spring! See you, now, what it is to be the general favorite. Nay, I swear to you, dear Judith, you are the sweetheart of all of them; and what a shame it is that I must take you away from them all!"
THE END.
List of Corrections:
p. [11]: "and a semicicle on the crumbling earth" was changed to "and a semicircle on the crumbling earth."