But with all this, and all her gratitude, Geraldine's longing had
been for home. She was very happy, and it was doing her a great deal
of good; but Mamma, and Felix, and Wilmet, and Sibby, and the babies,
were tugging at her heart, and would not let it go out from them. She
was always dreaming that Felix's heels were coming through his
stockings, that Mamma was calling and nobody coming, or that Bernard
was cutting off the heads of the twins with the blunt scissors. And
when Dr. Lee's course of treatment was over, and Felix had a holiday
to come and fetch her home, it is not easy to say which was happiest.
For she was so glad to be at home amid the dear faces, troubling and
troublous as they often were, and so comfortable in the old wheel-
ruts of care and toil, that it really seemed as if a new epoch of joy
had begun. Felix openly professed how sorely he had missed her, and
she clung to his arm with exulting mutual delight; but it was almost
more triumphant pleasure to be embraced by Wilmet with the words:
'Dear, dear Cherry, there you are at last. You can't think how we
have all wanted you! I never knew how useful you are.'
'I suppose,' said Felix quaintly, 'the world would rather miss its
axis, and yet that does not move.
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