“I wouldn’t be gardener there, after the lil missie had gone . . . no, not for the Bank of Ellan and it full of goold.”

What a happy, happy day that was!  There was many another day like it, too, during the sweet time following, when spring was smiling once more upon earth and man, and body and soul in myself were undergoing a resurrection no less marvellous.

After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able to take walks with Martin—­through the leafy lanes with the golden gorse on the high turf hedges and its nutty odour in the air, as far, sometimes, as to the shore, where we talked about “asploring” or perhaps (without speaking at all) looked into each other’s eyes and laughed.

There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation from my child, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in my own position which the presence of my baby would make acute (setting all the evil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I grew stronger, I yearned for my little treasure.

The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage and asked Martin if I might have my precious darling back.

“Girlie?” he cried.  “Certainly you may.  You are well enough now, so why shouldn’t you?  I’m going to London on Exploration business soon, and I’ll bring her home with me.”

But when he was gone (Mildred went with him) I was still confronted by one cause of anxiety—­Christian Ann.  I could not even be sure she knew of the existence of my child, still less that Martin intended to fetch her.

So once more I took my heart in both hands, and while we sat together in the garden, with the sunlight pouring through the trees, Christian Ann knitting and I pretending to read, I told her all.

She knew everything already, the dear old thing, and had only been waiting for me to speak.  After dropping a good many stitches she said: 

“The world will talk, and dear heart knows what Father Dan himself will say.  But blood’s thicker than water even if it’s holy water, and she’s my own child’s child, God bless her!”

After that we had such delicious times together, preparing for the little stranger who was to come—­cutting up blankets and sheets, and smuggling down from the “loft” to “Mary O’Neill’s room” the wooden cradle which had once been Martin’s, and covering it with bows and ribbons.

We kept the old doctor in the dark (pretended we did) and when he wondered “what all the fuss was about,” and if “the island expected a visit from the Queen,” we told him (Christian Ann did) to “ask us no questions and we’d tell no lies.”

What children we were, we two mothers, the old one and the young one!  I used to hint, with an air of great mystery, that my baby had “somebody’s eyes,” and then the dear simple old thing would say: 

“Somebody’s eyes, has she?  Well, well!  Think of that, now!”

But Christian Ann, from the lofty eminence of the motherhood of one child twenty-five years before, was my general guide and counsellor, answering all my foolish questions when I counted up baby’s age (eleven months now) and wondered if she could walk and talk by this time, how many of her little teeth should have come and whether she could remember me.