“Two weeks longer!  How can I bear it?” he said, rising up, and pacing the floor backwards and forwards, after reading her letter for the tenth time.  On the next day, the seventh of his lonely state, Mr. Gray sat down to write again to Lucy.  Several times he wrote the words, as he proceeded in the letter—­“Come home soon,”—­but as often obliterated them.  He did not wish to appear over-anxious for her return, on her father’s and mother’s account, who were much attached to her.  But, forgetting this reason for not urging her early return, he had commenced again writing the words, “Come home soon,” when a pair of soft hands were suddenly placed over his eyes, by some one who had stolen softly up behind him.

“Guess my name!” said a voice, in feigned tones.

Gray had no need to guess whose were the hands, for a sudden cry of joy from a little toddling thing, told that “Mamma” had come.

How “Mamma” was hugged and kissed all round, need not here be told.  That scene was well enough in its place, but would lose its interest in telling.  It may be imagined, however, without suffering any particular detriment, by all who have a fancy for such things.

“And father, too!” suddenly exclaimed Mr. Gray, after he had almost smothered his wife with kisses, looking up, with an expression of pleasure and surprise, at an old man who stood looking on, with his good-humoured face covered with smiles.

“Yes.  I had to bring the good-for-nothing jade home,” replied the old man, advancing and grasping his son-in-law’s hand, with a hearty grip.  “She did nothing but mope and cry all the while, and I don’t care if she never comes to see us again, unless she brings you along to keep her in good-humour.”

“And I never intend going alone again,” Mrs. Gray said, holding a little chubby girl to her bosom, while she kissed it over and over again, at the same time that she pressed close up to her husband’s side.

The old man understood it all.  He was not jealous of Lucy’s affection, for he knew that she loved him as tenderly as ever.  He was too glad to know that she was happy with a husband to whom she was as the apple of his eye.  In about three months Lucy made another visit “home.”  But husband and child were along, this time, and the visit proved a happy one all around.  Of course, “father and mother” had their jest and their laugh, and their affectation of jealousy and anger at Lucy for her “childishness,” as they termed it, when home in May; but Lucy, though half-vexed at herself for what she called a weakness, nevertheless persevered in saying that she never meant to go anywhere again without Henry.  “That was settled.”

The Project Gutenberg Etext of Woman’s Trials, by T.S.  Arthur ****This file should be named wmnst10.txt or wmnst10.zip****

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