“Write for mother to come. I want her!”
“Why, of course.” Marcia continued to look at him, and kept the quivering hold she had laid of his hand when he raised his head. “Was that all?”
She was silent, and he added, “I will ask your father to come with her.”
She hid her face for the space of one sob. “I wanted you to offer.”
“Why, of course! of course!” he replied.
She did not acknowledge his magnanimity directly, but she lifted the coverlet and showed him the little head on her arm, and the little creased and crumpled face.
“Pretty?” she asked. “Bring me the letter before you send it.—Yes, that is just right,—perfect!” she sighed, when he came back and read the letter to her; and she fell away to happy sleep.
Her father answered that he would come with her mother as soon as he got the better of a cold he had taken. It was now well into the winter, and the journey must have seemed more formidable in Equity than in Boston. But Bartley was not impatient of his father-in-law's delay, and he set himself cheerfully about consoling Marcia for it. She stole her white, thin hand into his, and now and then gave it a little pressure to accent the points she made in talking.
“Father was the first one I thought of—after you, Bartley. It seems to me as if baby came half to show me how unfeeling I had been to him. Of course, I'm not sorry I ran away and asked you to take me back, for I couldn't have had you if I hadn't done it; but I never realized before how cruel it was to father. He always made such a pet of me; and I know that he thought he was acting for the best.”
“I knew that you were,” said Bartley, fervently.