University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.
A SURPRISE FOR MRS. GINNISS.

“Sure an' it's time they was a-coomin',” said Mrs. Ginniss,
going out upon the door-stone, and shading her eyes
from the level rays of the sunset as she looked steadfastly
down the road.

“An' who'll they all be, I'm woondherin'? The missus
says foive bids was wanted; an' faith it's well she said no
more, for sorra a place'ud there be to stand anudder in. An'
tay ready for eight folks, at sax o'clock. That's it, I belave;
though all thim figgers is enough to craze me poor head.”

She took a little note from her pocket as she spoke, and,
unfolding it, looked anxiously at the delicate letters.

“Sure an' it's all there if on'y I had the sinse to rade it.
An' feth, it's the tail uv it I'm howldin' to the top, as I'm a
sinner! No, thin: it looks as crabbed this way as that. I'd
niver be afther makin' it out if it towld of a fortin coomin'
to me for the axin'. Shusin, Shusin, I say!”

“What is it, Mrs. Ginniss?” asked a pleasant voice from

within; and Susan, looking a little thinner and paler than
when we first met her, came out of the parlor, where she
had been picking a few scattered petals from beneath the
vases of flowers upon the mantle-shelf.

“An' would ye be plazed to read the missus's note to
me wonst more? Me owld eyes are that dim, I can't make it
out in the gloamin'.”

Susan, with unshaken gravity, took the note, turned it
right side up, and read aloud, while her companion craftily
glanced over her shoulder to note the position of the words
as they were spoken: —

“An' faith it's this minute they're coomin!' Look at the
jaantin'-cars fur down the road!”

“One's a carryall, and the other's a rockaway,” said Susan
sententiously.

“Musha, an' what's the odds if they're one thing or the
other, so they bring the purty misthress back halesomer
than she wint? That's her in the first car: I know her
white bonnet with the blue ribbon.”

“Yes, there's Mr. and Mrs. Legrange, and a strange lady
and gentleman; and the other carriage are all strangers, except
Mr. Burroughs. Those young ladies are pretty; ain't
they?”

But Mrs. Ginniss was already at the gate, courtesying and
beaming: —

“Ye're wilcoom home, missus and masther; an' it's in
health an' pace I hope yees coom.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ginniss. We are very well indeed, I
believe,” said Mr. Legrange rather nervously, as he jumped
from the carriage and helped out his wife, and then Kitty
and Mr. Brown. From the other carriage, meantime, had
alighted, without the good woman's observation, Mr. Burroughs,
Dora, Karl, and another, who, the moment her feet
touched the ground, ran forward, crying, —

“O mamma! I've been at this home before.”

At the sound, Mrs. Ginniss turned, dropping the shawls,
bags, and parasols she held, in one mass at her feet, and
then dropping herself upon her knees in their midst; while

her fresh face turned of a ghastly yellow, and her uplifted
hands shook visibly, —

“Glory be to God, an' what's that!” exclaimed she in a
voice of terror.

“Oh, it's mammy, it's mammy! that used to rock me in
her lap, and hold my feet, and sing to me! I 'member her
now, and Teddy said so too. O mammy! I'm so glad
you've come again!”

The sobbing woman opened wide her arms; and Sunshine
leaped into them, shouting again and again, —

“It's the good old mammy! and I'm so glad, I'm so
glad!”

“O Mrs. Legrange! is it?” exclaimed an agitated voice;
and Mrs. Legrange, turning, found Susan standing beside
her with pale face and clasped hands, her eyes fixed upon
the child with a sort of terror.

“Yes, Susan, it is 'Toinette, her very self. I would not
write, because I wanted to see if she would know you
both, and you her.”

“Oh, thank God! thank God! I didn't believe I'd ever
forgive myself for not minding her better; but now I may.
Miss 'Toinette, dear, won't you speak to Susan?”

“Susan!” exclaimed the child, struggling out of Mrs.

Ginniss's embrace, and leaving that good woman still
exploding in a feu-de-joie of thanksgiving, emotion, and
astonishment. “Are you Susan? Why, that was a doll!”

“A doll?” asked the nurse in bewilderment, and pausing
in act of kissing her recovered charge, not with the rapturous
abandonment of the Irish woman, but with the respectful
tenderness of a trained English servant.

“She named a doll after you, Mrs. Ginniss says, although
she did not remember who you really were,”
explained Mrs. Legrange. “But come, my friends: we
will not wait longer out of doors. Dora, you and
Kitty know the way even better than I; and Mr.
Windsor” —

“It isn't Mr. Windsor, it's Karlo, mamma,” persisted
Sunshine, dancing up the narrow path in advance of the
party.

“Yes, Karl, if you will be so kind,” said Dr. Windsor,
offering Mrs. Legrange his arm.

“Then Karl will feel himself as much at home here as
he ever did, I trust,” said the lady cordially.

“It was peeping out at that window I saw you first,
Dora; and I thought it must be the sunrise,” whispered
Tom Burroughs to the lady he escorted.

“I am sorry I should have so put you out of countenance.
Perhaps that is the reason you never have seen
straight since, — so far as I am concerned at least,” replied
she.

“One does not care to look straight at the sun: it is
sufficient to bask in its light,” whispered the lover.

“Oh! very well, if that is what you want — Here, Sunshine!
Cousin Tom wants you.”

The little girl came bounding toward them; and Dora,
with a wicked little laugh, slipped away, and up the stairs,
to the room that had been Kitty's, now appropriated to the
use of the two young girls.

Soon the happy party assembled again in the kitchen,
where stood a tea-table judiciously combining the generous
breadth of Mrs. Ginniss's ideas with the more elegant and
subdued tastes inculcated upon Susan by a long period of
service with her present mistress.

“Mind you tell 'em there's more beyant, on'y you
wouldn't set it on all to wonst,” whispered the Irish
woman hoarsely, as she rushed into the scullery, leaving
Susan to receive the guests just entering the kitchen.

“Mrs. Ginniss thought we should arrive with appetites,
I suspect,” said the hostess, laughing a little apologetically

as they seated themselves; and Susan did not think it best
to deliver her message.

“And so we have, some of us at least; and I do not
believe even the ladies will refuse a bit of this nice tongue,
or some cold chicken. What do you say, Dora?” asked
Mr. Legrange gayly.

“No tongue for her, please; she is supplied,” remarked
Mr. Burroughs sotto voce; and Dora, with a little mutinous
glance, passed her plate with, —

“A slice of tongue, if you please, Mr. Legrange.”

“Never mind: wait a few days, and we will see,” murmured
Burroughs threateningly; and Dora did not care to
retort, but, blushing brightly, began an eager conversation
with Sunshine, who had nestled a chair in between those
of her mother and Dora, and made lively claims upon the
attention of both.

An hour or two later, Mrs. Legrange went to seek her
housekeeper, and found her seated upon the step of the
back door, her hands clasped around her knees, and softly
crooning a wild Irish melody to herself as she rocked
slowly backward and forward, her eyes fixed upon the
little crescent moon, swimming like a silver boat in the
golden sea of sunset.

“An' isn't it a purty sight, yon?” asked she, rising as
Mrs. Legrange spoke to her. “Sure an' its the hooneymoon
for Misther Booros an' the swate young lady that's to
marry him.”

“Yes, it's their honey-moon; and I believe it will be as
bright and as long a one as ever shone,” said Mrs. Legrange,
smiling tenderly, as happy wives will do in speaking
of the future of a bride.

“I came to ask you to go up stairs with me, Mrs Ginniss,”
continued she with a little agitation in her sweet
voice. “There is something for you to see.”

“Sure an' I will, ma'am. Is it the chambers isn't
settled to shute yees?”

“Oh, no! every thing is admirable, except that we must
contrive a little bed for 'Toinette upon the couch in my
room.”

“An', faith, that's asy done, ma'am. There's lashin's o'
blankets an' sheets an' pillers not in use at all, at all.
We've plenty uv ivery thin' in this house, glory be to
God!”

Mrs. Legrange smiled a little at the satisfaction with
which the Irish woman contemplated a superfluity, even
when not belonging to herself; and led the way to her

own chamber, where sat Dora, as she had sat many a time
within those four walls, holding Sunshine upon her lap,
and, while loosening her clothes for the night, telling her
one of the stories of which the child was never weary.

“See here, Mrs. Ginniss!” said the mother hastily, as
she stripped the frock from the child's white shoulders, and
showed a little linen bag hung about her neck by a silken
cord. “Did you ever see that before?”

“Sure an' what would ail me owld eyes not to seen it,
whin me own fingers sewed it, an' me own han's hoong it
aboot the little crather's nick?”

“You are quite sure it is the very same?”

“Quite an' intirely; for more by token the clot' is a bit
uv the linen gownd that my mother give me whin I wor
married to Michael, an' the sthring wor to a locket that my
b'y give me one Christmas Day.”

“And what is in it?” asked Mrs. Legrange eagerly.

“The bracelet, uv coorse. Whin Teddy brought her to
me the black night he foun' her sinseless in the strate, she
had it clinched in the little hand uv her; an', whin she got
betther, there wor nought she loved so well to have by her,
an' tooch, an' look at. So when she roomed about, an' I
wor thinkin' it might be laid asthray, or she might lave it

out the windy, or some place, an' not find it, I sewed it up
in the bit bag, an' placed it round her nick, and bid her
niver, niver, niver let it be took off till she coom to her
own agin.

“`That manes hivin, mammy, don't it?' axed the darlint
in her own purty way; an' so I says, `Yis, that manes
hivin; an' don't ye niver be lettin' man, woman, nor child,
be knowin' to it, till ye git to hivin'.' For sure I knowed
she must be some person's child that 'ud one day give
their hearts out uv their buzzums to know for sure that
she wor their own.”

“And that is the reason she never would let me look at
it, or open it,” said Dora. “She always said, when I
asked about it, that it was to go to heaven with her; and,
when she got there, she'd open it. So I supposed it was a
charm or relic, such as some of our soldiers used to carry
about their necks; and I never meddled with it.”

“And I, although I knew what it must be, wanted to
hear Mrs. Ginniss say that it was the very same, bag and
all, that she put about the darling's neck soon after she went
to her. But now” —

The quick snip of the scissors finished the sentence, and
the bag lay in Mrs. Legrange's palm. Sunshine's little

hand went up rather forlornly to her bosom, robbed of what
it so long had cherished; and Dora clasped her tighter, and
kissed her tenderly: but neither spoke, until Mrs. Legrange
drew from the bag, and held before them, the coral bracelet,
with its linked cameos, broken at one point by the force
with which Mother Winch had torn it from the child's
shoulder, and with the clasp still closed.

Mrs. Legrange opened it, touched the spring, causing
the upper plate to fly up, and silently showed to Dora the
name “Antoinette Legrange” engraved within.

“Not quite two years since it was engraved, and what a
life of sorrow!” said she softly.

Then, going to her jewel-case, she took out the mate,
saved as a sacred relic since the day it had been found
upon the floor in the drawing-room after 'Toinette's flight,
and handed it to the child, saying, —

“Here is the other one, darling; and you may, if you
like, give it to Dora for your wedding-present. This one,
that has shared the wanderings of my poor little lost lamb
so long, I shall keep for myself.”

“Will you take it, Dora, and some love, ever so much
love, along with it?” said Sunshine, trying to make her little
offering in somewhat the form she had heard from older

people, but finishing with a sudden clasp of her arms about
Dora's neck, and a shower of kisses, among which came
the whispered words, —

“I love you ever and ever so much better than Cousin
Tom does, Dora. Be my little wife, and never mind him;
won't you?”