At last his energy met with reward, for he was the first to bring in a telegram addressed to his grandmother. He waited by her knee with glistening eyes, his pulses throbbing painfully as she read the flimsy paper: "Shall be with you to-morrow; crossing to-night.--Cristina."
It seemed to the boy that his heart stopped beating and would never go on again as he heard the wonderful intelligence. He struggled for breath as he gasped out the good news to Miss Ainsworth, who had just appeared to take him for a walk.
"She will be here for New Year's Eve! She rests in Dublin, you know, and gets to us late in the afternoon," he cried, his face like a sunbeam. "She changed her mind when she got our letters; I expect she saw we wanted her very, very badly."
The hours flew quickly with so much gladness in store, and Hal was quite ready to go to bed early, that to-morrow might come the sooner--to-morrow, the day of days, long waited for, through weary months of watching. Miss Ainsworth came to the boy's bedside fearing he would never sleep--with his brain in such a whirl of feverish expectation.
She found him open-eyed and flushed. Immediately he began speaking of his mother.
"To-morrow night she will come in, shading the candle with her hand," he said. "She will wear a lovely dress she calls a tea-gown, all soft and lacey, and she doesn't mind how much I crumple it." He smiled at the thought and hugged his pillows.
"I wonder why she suddenly changed her mind?" murmured Miss Ainsworth. Hal sat bolt upright, his eyes very alert.
"It was all through my letter," he answered, triumphantly.
[Illustration: "'IT WAS ALL THROUGH MY LETTER,' HE ANSWERED."]
"What did you say?" Miss Ainsworth felt very curious as she put the question; she had never before dealt with a child of uncommon character.
"I begged her to come," he replied, his tone vibrating with the energy of a youthful passion. "I said I would like her to lose her voice on the way and never find it again; then she would stay with me always, like other mothers, who live at home with their children. I put: 'Never mind about the old voice, dearest; it's always a bother, taking you away,' and lots of things like that, just to show her how much I cared. Oh! and I dropped some tears on the letter, so it all went crinkly."