Chapter V: Part 5

Johnny gave her half the packet of peppermints he had bought for Pomona. With some of his saved money he bought her a bottle of stout--she looked tired and sad--she was very fond of stout. The rest of the money he gave her for to buy Pomony something when she visited her. He would not go himself to visit her, not there. He spent the long intervening evenings at the library--the odd-eyed man had shown him a lovely book about birds. He was studying it. On Sundays, in the spring, he was going out to catch birds himself, out in the country, with a catapult. The cuckoo was a marvellous bird. So was a titlark. Donald Gower found a goatsucker's nest last year.

Then one day he ran from work all the way home, knowing Pomony would at last be there. He walked slowly up the street to recover his breath. He stepped up the stairs, humming quite casually, and tapped at the door of their room--he did not know why he tapped. He heard Pomony's voice calling him. A thinner paler Pomony stood by the hearth, nursing a white-clothed bundle, the fat pink babe.

"Oh, my dear!" cried her ecstatic brother, "the beauty he is! What larks we'll have with him!"

He took Pomona into his arms, crushing the infant against her breast and his own. But she did not mind. She did not rebuke him, she even let him dandle her precious babe.

"Look, what is his name to be, Pomony? Let's call him Rasselas."

Pomona looked at him very doubtfully.

"Or would you like William Wallace, then, or Robert Bruce?"

"I shall call him Johnny," said Pomona.

"Oh, that's silly!" protested her brother. But Pomona was quite positive about this. He fancied there were tears in her eyes, she was always tender-hearted.

"I shall call him Johnny--Johnny Flynn."

Printed at The Golden Cockerel Press

End of Project Gutenberg's Clorinda Walks in Heaven, by Alfred Edgar Coppard