ad insisted on a
demonstration. Then, on reaching our village, Martin had got down and
shaken hands with everybody--the joiner and the grocer and the
blacksmith and the widow who keeps the corner shop--so that it had taken
him a quarter of an hour to get through, amid a general chorus of "The
boy he is, though!" and "No pride at all at all!"

After that he drove home at top speed, and my quick ears caught the
musical hum of the motor as it crossed the bridge. Good gracious, what
excitement!

"Quick nurse, help me to the gate."

I got there just in time to hear a shout, and to see a precipitate bound
out of the car and then . . . what an embrace!

It is such a good thing my Martin is a big, brawny person, for I don't
know how I should have got back to the house, being so weak and
breathless just then, if his strong arm had not been round my waist.

Dr. O'Sullivan had come too, looking as gay as a humming-bird, and after
I had finished with Martin I kissed him also (having such a largesse of
affection to distribute generally), whereupon he blushed like a boy,
bless him, and stammered out something about St. Patrick and St. Thomas,
and how he wouldn't have believed anybody who had said there was
anything so sweet, etc.

Martin said I was looking so well, and he, too, declared he wouldn't
have believed any man who had sworn I could have looked so much better
in the time.

My nervous thermometer must have gone up by leaps and bounds during the
next hour, for immediately after tea the old doctor ordered me back to
bed, though I refused to go until he had faithfully promised that the
door to the staircase should be kept open, so that I could hear what was
said downstairs.

What lots of fun they had there! Half the parish must have come in "to
put a sight" on Martin after his investiture, including old Tommy the
Mate, who told everybody over and over again that he had "known the lad
since he was a lump" and "him and me are same as brothers."

The old doctor's stately pride must have been something to see. It was
"Sir Martin" here and "Sir Martin" there, until I could have cried to
hear him. I felt just as foolish myself, too, for though I cannot
remember that my pulse gave one extra beat when they made me "your
ladyship," now that Martin has become. . . . But that's what we women
are, you see!

At length Martin's big voice came up clear above the rest, and then the
talk was about the visit to Windsor. Christian Ann