The other train might be late too, so it would be impossible for him
to come out--but would she still wait? Did the thousand year limit
still hold?

There was just a hint of fatigue in his voice, which awakened all the
maternal instincts in Pearl, and made her heart very tender to him.

"I will wait--forever," said Pearl.

"Just until tomorrow," came back the voice--"just till tomorrow--and
it will be fine tomorrow--won't it, Pearl! Say it will be fine."

"Finer still," she replied, with her cheeks like the early roses in
June.

The day went by on satin wings--with each minute so charged with
happiness that Pearl could well believe that heaven had slipped down
to earth, and that she was walking the streets of the new Jerusalem.
She sang as she worked in the house, her sweet, ribbony voice filling
the room with a gladness and rapture that made her mother, with her
mystical Celtic temperament almost apprehensive.

"She's a queer girl, is Pearlie," she said that night, when Pearl had
gone upstairs to arbitrate a quarrel which had broken out between
Bugsey and Danny as to whose turn it was to split the kindling wood.
"Day about" it had been until Bugsey had urged that it be changed to
"week about," and the delicate matter in dispute now was as to the day
on which the week expired. Danny, who had been doing the kindling, was
certain that the date of expiry had arrived, but Bugsey's calendar
set the day one day later, and the battle raged, with both sides ably