THE OLD HOME

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 9, 4 March 1909, Page 323

THE OLD HOME

(Concluded from last, week.) On Christmas Eve ' the sun^ flooded the room like a sun of summer. The wiiidows were open, and.'Captain La Touche had brought a great bunch of narcissi and laid tnem in Pamela's lap. * She. was arranging them with an air of ecstasy which could have been believed possible in, her a week ago. He.jStood smiling down at her. ' You are happy ?' he said. - r '* ' I am like one who has lost ~ Heaven and found it again.'' - ; ' c Is it so good to be with us ?' 'So good,' she said joyously, ' that I feel_ as if it must presently take wings and fly away like a, good dream. Miss La Touche will find me a poor companion. lam very unaccomplished. To be sure, I- will do for her all love can- do.' ' Aunt Matilda would . not -know what to do with a companion — in the ordinary sense. She took ,a yiolent fancy to . you that day we first met. You know my leave was just up. i went back-- to* India after" leaving Aunt Matilda with an old friend in Nice. . I thought of " you often and often ; of your mother and- the old house. I might have resigned then' if \there hadn't been trouble afoot. I always meant tib come back to you.' ~" She dropped the flowers >and' looked away from him, her cheek like the pink hollyhock that summer's day- long ago. 'Do you know what I have been doing, Pam ?' he went on. ' What has kept me from your side this week past? I have been buying Ardmore. For you, my darling. It looked so lonely and sad. They are. lighting' fires "in it to-day. It is being put, in order for us, but I have altered nothing.. You- will see "it 1 just- as you left it. If ~ there is anything else- to be dorie^— the new.- mistress must - arrange all that.' '_ ':->, , " ' He put his arms about her,, and drew, her head to his breast.- , . 'Imagine,' he said, 'La. Touches and Langfords back in the old house. Aunt Matilda knows. She left us' together that I might speak. We will all go back together. The old place is -lonely for - us. We will bring /joy and. love there once again. Our children, Langfords and La Touches, will make it glad with their presence. It will not be lonely any more.''" She sighed against his ear a sigh of overful happiness. c I know now,' she said, ' why the place seemed so happy in my dream.' — Catholic ' Weekly.