“It’s right I should have what me grandmother intinded for me father, and I want it,” said Freckles, “but I’d die before I’d touch a cent of me grandfather’s money!”

“Now,” said the Angel, “we are all going home.  We have done all we can for Freckles.  His people are here.  He should know them.  They are very anxious to become acquainted with him.  We’ll resign him to them.  When he is well, why, then he will be perfectly free to go to Ireland or come to the Limberlost, just as he chooses.  We will go at once.”

McLean held out for a week, and then he could endure it no longer.  He was heart hungry for Freckles.  Communing with himself in the long, soundful nights of the swamp, he had learned to his astonishment that for the past year his heart had been circling the Limberlost with Freckles.  He began to wish that he had not left him.  Perhaps the boy—­his boy by first right, after all—­was being neglected.  If the Boss had been a nervous old woman, he scarcely could have imagined more things that might be going wrong.

He started for Chicago, loaded with a big box of goldenrod, asters, fringed gentians, and crimson leaves, that the Angel carefully had gathered from Freckles’ room, and a little, long slender package.  He traveled with biting, stinging jealousy in his heart.  He would not admit it even to himself, but he was unable to remain longer away from Freckles and leave him to the care of Lord O’More.

In a few minutes’ talk, while McLean awaited admission to Freckles’ room, his lordship had chatted genially of Freckles’ rapid recovery, of his delight that he was unspotted by his early surroundings, and his desire to visit the Limberlost with Freckles before they sailed; he expressed the hope that he could prevail upon the Angel’s father to place her in his wife’s care and have her education finished in Paris.  He said they were anxious to do all they could to help bind Freckles’ arrangements with the Angel, as both he and Lady O’More regarded her as the most promising girl they knew, and one who could be fitted to fill the high position in which Freckles would place her.

Every word he uttered was pungent with bitterness to McLean.  The swamp had lost its flavor without Freckles; and yet, as Lord O’More talked, McLean fervently wished himself in the heart of it.  As he entered Freckles’ room he almost lost his breath.  Everything was changed.

Freckles lay beside a window where he could follow Lake Michigan’s blue until the horizon dipped into it.  He could see big soft clouds, white-capped waves, shimmering sails, and puffing steamers trailing billowing banners of lavender and gray across the sky.  Gulls and curlews wheeled over the water and dipped their wings in the foam.  The room was filled with every luxury that taste and money could introduce.

All the tan and sunburn had been washed from Freckles’ face in sweats of agony.  It was a smooth, even white, its brown rift scarcely showing.  What the nurses and Lady O’More had done to Freckles’ hair McLean could not guess, but it was the most beautiful that he ever had seen.  Fine as floss, bright in color, waving and crisp, it fell around the white face.