put a man in good
humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.
Having relished that pudding and cleared away, I turned the lamp low, and
sat down by the light of the fire, watching it as it shone upon the backs
of Sophy's books.

Sophy's books so brought Sophy's self, that I saw her touching face quite
plainly, before I dropped off dozing by the fire. This may be a reason
why Sophy, with her deaf-and-dumb child in her arms, seemed to stand
silent by me all through my nap. I was on the road, off the road, in all
sorts of places, North and South and West and East, Winds liked best and
winds liked least, Here and there and gone astray, Over the hills and far
away, and still she stood silent by me, with her silent child in her
arms. Even when I woke with a start, she seemed to vanish, as if she had
stood by me in that very place only a single instant before.

I had started at a real sound, and the sound was on the steps of the
cart. It was the light hurried tread of a child, coming clambering up.
That tread of a child had once been so familiar to me, that for half a
moment I believed I was a-going to see a little ghost.

But the touch of a real child was laid upon the outer handle of the door,
and the handle turned, and the door opened a little way, and a real child
peeped in. A bright little comely girl with large dark eyes.

Looking full at me, the tiny creature took off her mite of a straw hat,
and a quantity of dark curls fell about her face. Then she opened her
lips, and said in a pretty voice,

"Grandfather!"

"Ah, my God!" I cries out. "She can speak!"

"Yes, dear grandfather. And I am to ask you whether there was ever any
one that I remind you of?"

In a moment Sophy was round my neck, as well as the child, and her
husband was a-wringing my hand with his face hid, and we all had to shake
ourselves together before we could get over it. And when we did begin to
get over it, and I saw the pretty child a-talking, pleased and quick and
eager and busy, to her mother, in the signs that I had first taught her
mother, the happy and yet pitying tears fell rolling down my face.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR MARIGOLD***

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