The Tiger of Mysore Part 55

"I know nothing of women, Annie," he said, "or their ways. I have been bothering myself how to set about it, but though I don't know how to put it, I do know that I love you dearly. All these years I have been thinking about you--not like this, you know, but as the dear, plucky little girl of the old days."

"The little girl of old days, d.i.c.k," she said quietly, "is in no way changed. I think you know what I thought of you, then. I have never for a moment wavered. I gave you all the love of my heart, and you have had it ever since.

"Why, you silly boy," she said, with a laugh, a few minutes later, "I had begun to think that, just as I had to ask you for a kiss in the old times, and again when you met me, I should have to take this matter in hand. Why, I never thought of anything else. Directly I got old enough to look upon myself as a woman, and young men began to come to the house, I said to my dear father:

"'It is of no use their coming here, Father. My mind has been made up for years, and I shall never change.'

"He knew at once what I meant.

"'I don't blame you, my dear,' he said. 'Of course, you are young at present, but he has won you fairly; and if he is at all like what you make him out to be, I could not leave you in better hands. He will be home in another three or four years, and I shall have the comfort of having you with me, until then. But you must not make too sure of it.

He may fall in love out there. You know that there is plenty of society at Madras.'

"I laughed at the idea.

"'All the pretty ones either come out to be married, or get engaged on the voyage, or before they have been there a fortnight. I have no fear, Father, of his falling in love out there, though I don't say he might not when he gets home, for of course he thinks of me only as a little girl.'

"'Well, my dear,' he said, 'we will get him, and his father and mother, to come down as soon as he gets home. As you have made up your mind about it, it is only right that you should have the first chance.'

"It was not to be as he planned, d.i.c.k, but you see I have had the first chance, and it is well it was so, for no one can say how matters would have turned out, if I had not been on the spot. Do you know, d.i.c.k, I felt that when you rescued me from slavery, you became somehow straightway my lord and master. As you carried me that night before you, I said to myself I should always be your little slave; and you see, it has come quite true."

"I don't know about that, Annie. We are in England now, and there are no slaves. You will be the mistress now, and I your devoted servant."

"It will be as I say, d.i.c.k," she said tenderly. "I feel that, to the end of my life, I shall remain your willing slave."

There was nothing to prevent an early marriage. It was settled that Captain and Mrs. Holland should retain the house, which indeed they could well afford to do, and that d.i.c.k and Annie should reside there whenever they were in town, but that, as a rule, they would live at the estate her father had purchased, near Plymouth. Their means were ample, for during the eight years he was in the Service, d.i.c.k's 12,000 pounds had, as his father had predicted, doubled itself; and Annie's fortune was at least as large as his own.

d.i.c.k had good reason to bless, to the end of his life, his mother's plan; that had resulted in the double satisfaction of restoring his father to her, and in winning for himself the woman whom he ever regarded as the dearest and best wife in the world.