I put my hat down on a chair; up she jumped, over went the sewing, and into my arms she flew.
I got my arms right round her, and I held her tight; you bet I did. I didn't say much, but I supplied the deficiency in another way. Presently I did make a remark.
'Why, my girl, you look--well, I really think you're getting pretty.'
She turned the colour of a strawberry that's just getting ripe--the cream showing through the red. Every time I pay her a compliment she seems to tingle right to the roots of her hair. It's an old joke, my pretending to discover that she's getting pretty--as though she hadn't always been that vision of all that's fair in woman, of which, until I met her, I had only dreamed!--but every time I make it she looks that sweet she reminds me of a meadow on the slope of a hill, in which the spring flowers are tipped with dew.
'Hollo! I do believe you're that little boy of mine whose name was Jimmy.'
'Dad! dad! I knew you'd come home soon, 'cause I did ask God so hard last night to sent you.'
'Tourse it is! tourse it is! Ooo know it is.'
There they were, dancing about me, as fine a pair of youngsters as you'd meet in a long day's journey.
'It's a most extraordinary thing; what does make these pockets of mine stick out? I wonder what it is inside.'
Then there was the business of turning those pockets of mine inside out, and discovering that there was something in every one of them. Amazing how such things could have got there. Ah, there's nothing like these family reunions. There wasn't a happier home than ours in the whole of that great city. Mary on my knee--how glad I was to have her there again--the children divided between their delight at their new possessions, and their joy at seeing father--it's only in such moments that we really live.
And such a tale as that wife of mine had to tell. Dear! dear! it's a strange world, and the most incredible things do happen.
It seemed that she had been anxious about me.
'Now, Mary, haven't I told you not to be anxious? Can't you understand that the very thought of your anxiety increases mine?'
This time she hadn't been able to help it to a very considerable extent. She'd actually thought that I was dead. That was, FitzHoward had been putting ideas into her head. And there was something about a man named Smith. But the tale got pretty considerably mixed; she never was much of a hand at telling a tale, my Mary. I couldn't make sense of it at all. My saying so, and laughing at her, didn't make it any plainer. Somebody--a Miss Something-or-other--had actually made her think that I was a nobleman. That idea did tickle me so, and I put it in such a way, that I started her laughing at it herself. And then when she'd once started she wouldn't stop; she's a keen sense of humour, Mary has. And she does look so pretty when she's laughing. It does me good to see her. Then the children joined. Oh, what a laugh we had at the idea of my being a British nobleman!