The Wounded

I went in and stood before her. She pulled off her spectacles,
looked at me, changed colour and started up. I can hardly tell
what she said. I think I was in too great a confusion for my
senses to do their office perfectly. But her warm arms were
about me, and my head found a hiding-place on her shoulder.

"Sit down, my lamb, my lamb!" were the first words I remember.
"Janet, shut the door, and tell anybody I am busy. Sit you
down here and rest. My lamb, ye're all shaken. Daisy, my pet,
where have you been?"

I sat down, and she did, but I leaned over to the arms that
still enfolded me and laid my head on her bosom. She was
silent now for a while. And I wished she would speak, but I
could not. Her arms pressed me close in the embrace that had
so comforted my childhood. She had taken off my bonnet and
kissed me and smoothed my hair; and that was all, for what
seemed a long while.

"What is it?" she said at last. "I know you're left, my
darling. I heard of your loss, while you were so far away from
home. One is gone from your world."

"He was happy - he is happy," I whispered.

"Let us praise the Lord for that!" she said in her broadest
Scotch accent, which only came out in moments of feeling.

"But he was nearly all my world, Miss Cardigan."

"Ay," she said. "We have but one father. And yet, no, my bairn.
Ye're not left desolate."