"Wait!" cried the Angel with inborn refinement, for she could no more answer that question than he could ask. "Wait, I will write it!"She hurried to the table, caught up the nurse's pencil, and on the back of a prescription tablet scrawled it: "Terence Maxwell O'More, Dunderry House, County Clare, Ireland."Before she had finished came Freckles' voice: "Angel, are you hurrying?""Yes," said the Angel; "I am. But there is a good deal of it. I have to put in your house and country, so that you will feel located.""Me house?" marveled Freckles.
"Of course," said the Angel. "Your uncle says your grandmother left your father her dower house and estate, because she knew his father would cut him off. You get that, and all your share of your grandfather's property besides. It is all set off for you and waiting. Lord O'More told me so. I suspect you are richer than McLean, Freckles."She closed his fingers over the slip and straightened his hair.
"Now you are all right, dear Limberlost guard," she said. "You go to sleep and don't think of a thing but just pure joy, joy, joy!
I'll keep your people until you wake up. You are too tired to see anyone else just now!"Freckles caught her skirt as she turned from him.
"I'll go to sleep in five minutes," he said, "if you will be doing just one thing more for me. Send for your father! Oh, Angel, send for him quick! How will I ever be waiting until he comes?"One instant the Angel stood looking at him. The next a crimson wave darkly stained her lovely face. Her chin began a spasmodic quivering and the tears sprang into her eyes. Her hands caught at her chest as if she were stifling. Freckles' grasp on her tightened until he drew her beside him. He slipped his arm around her and drew her face to his pillow.
"Don't, Angel; for the love of mercy don't be doing that,"he implored. "I can't be bearing it. Tell me. You must tell me."The Angel shook her head.
"That ain't fair, Angel," said Freckles. "You made me tell you when it was like tearing the heart raw from me breast. And you was for making everything heaven--just heaven and nothing else for me.
If I'm so much more now than I was an hour ago, maybe I can be thinking of some way to fix things. You will be telling me?" he coaxed, moving his cheek against her hair.
The Angel's head moved in negation. Freckles did a moment of intent thinking.
"Maybe I can be guessing," he whispered. "Will you be giving me three chances?"There was the faintest possible assent.
"You didn't want me to be knowing me name," guessed Freckles.
The Angel's head sprang from the pillow and her tear-stained face flamed with outraged indignation.
"Why, I did too!" she cried angrily.
"One gone," said Freckles calmly. "You didn't want me to have relatives, a home, and money.""I did!" exclaimed the Angel. "Didn't I go myself, all alone, into the city, and find them when I was afraid as death? I did too!""Two gone," said Freckles. "You didn't want the beautifulest girl in the world to be telling me.----"Down went the Angel's face and a heavy sob shook her. Freckles' clasp tightened around her shoulders, while his face, in its conflicting emotions, was a study. He was so stunned and bewildered by the miracle that had been performed in bringing to light his name and relatives that he had no strength left for elaborate mental processes. Despite all it meant to him to know his name at last, and that he was of honorable birth--knowledge without which life was an eternal disgrace and burden the one thing that was hammering in Freckles' heart and beating in his brain, past any attempted expression, was the fact that, while nameless and possibly born in shame, the Angel had told him that she loved him.
He could find no word with which to begin to voice the rapture of his heart over that. But if she regretted it--if it had been a thing done out of her pity for his condition, or her feeling of responsibility, if it killed him after all, there was only one thing left to do. Not for McLean, not for the Bird Woman, not for the Duncans would Freckles have done it--but for the Angel--if it would make her happy--he would do anything.
