CHAPTER XII. “WHEN I AM MARRIED!” CRIED FLOY.
Pretty soon John Banks, in an old frayed dressing-gown, opened the door himself, exclaiming:
“I thought you were going to stay all night with the girls, dearie!”
“I changed my mind,” she answered, softly; then threw her arms around his neck, laughing, and whispering: “I’m sorry I disturbed your nap, you dear old darling, but I’ll creep softly up to my room, and you can go to sleep again directly, can’t you?”
“Yes, I hope so; but I’ve not slept well to-night. My head aches a little. Maybe it will be all right in the morning. I’m glad you came home to-night, dear, I always feel better when you are in the house.”
“Do you, Uncle John? Oh, how good of you, when I’m nothing but a care to you, after all--a care and expense!”
“Don’t get such notions in your head, Floy. I love to work for you; that is what I told Miss Maury last evening, when she called to offer me a place for you in her father’s great New York store. I told her you should never go while I lived to take care of you, my child. But she said you had almost promised to go. Did you?”
“No; not unless you were to drive me away, you dear old darling! No, I shall never leave you till I am--married--no, not even then, for I shall marry rich, and take you and auntie to live with me in my grand New York home.”
“Castles in Spain!” laughed John Banks, incredulously; but it warmed his fifty-year-old heart to hear her gracious promises, and to realize how she loved him. He kissed her a fond good-night, and went back to his couch, where he slept better the few hours before the early dawn for knowing that his lovely adopted child, the merry madcap girl, was safe under the cottage roof.
And Floy, as she flew up the steps to her simple room, felt her heart throb with repentance over the way she had deceived the kind, trusting old soul, and resolved to make a clean breast of it in the morning by confessing her sojourn at Suicide Place.
“And I’ll promise him to never, never, never, set my foot there again!” she vowed, shuddering at the thought of all she had endured that night.
“What a terrible night, and what a happy ending!” she murmured as she sunk among the downy pillows of her little bed, with her thoughts full of her lover, grand, noble St. George Beresford.
She could hardly realize her happiness, pretty little Floy, for only two days ago she had not seen his face, although now it was the star of her future.
Her head was so full of the events of the night, that it was a long time before she fell asleep; so she was left undisturbed in the early morning when Mrs. Banks prepared her husband’s early breakfast and sent him off cheerfully to his work on a building two blocks away.
“Don’t call her till she wakes of herself, Mary,” he said as he kissed his wife good-bye and went away whistling merrily, though his head was not quite easy of its strange pain.
So Floy slept on deeply and dreamlessly like a weary child till the sun was several hours high in the heavens and the merry birds twittered unheard in the tree at her window--slept on sweetly, to wake at last in a confused haste with a terrible sense of disaster.
“Oh, what is the matter?” she shrieked aloud in fear and grief, springing up and rushing to the door.
For she had been startled from her calm, sweet sleep by the unwonted sounds of heavy footsteps lumbering in at the front door, while over all rose shrill, agonized cries in a woman’s voice--cries of bitter bereavement.