University of Virginia Library

1. I.
THE LITTLE CASTLE-BUILDERS.

Imagine, if you will, one of the quaintest old
country mansions that was ever built—a big-chimneyed,
antique-gabled, time-browned old pile, and
you have a picture of the Ivyton House as it was
in summers gone by.

The pillars of the porch were not to be seen for
the fragrant vines which clambered over them; lip-tempting
grapes purpled[1] on the southern gable of

the house, and the full, bright cherries clustered
thicker than stars among the leaves. The walks of
the garden were white with pebbles brought from
the sea-shore; the dewy clover-beds, on each side,
lay red with luscious strawberries, as if some one
had sprinkled drops of fire over them; and among
the larches and the cherry trees there was a salt
sea-smell pleasantly mingled with the breathing of
wild roses.

A large, round window in one of the gables looked
toward the ocean—a fine place for a summer view,
or to watch, of a gusty afternoon, the billows as
they swell and break in long waving battalions on
the beach.

One evening near the end of summer, two children
were sitting at this circular window. Ten
Aprils had half ripened them. The boy had dark
hair, and a touch of sunlight in his darker eyes.
The girl was light and delicate—with a face of
spiritual beauty, dream-like, heavenly, like the pictures
of the Madonna which genius has hung on
the chapel walls of the Old World.

“Bell,” said the boy, “we never grow weary of
looking at the sea.”

“No; because while we are watching, we think
that father may be coming home to us across its
bosom; and we count the waves as if they were

moments. We like to see them roll away, and feel
that time grows shorter between father and us.”

“Yes, that is so,” he replied; “but then, we
love night almost as much as the sea.”

“That is because we have a Father in heaven
as well as one at sea,” and the girl shaded her
angel face with a dainty little hand.

“And we love the sunbeams and the flowers,
Bell!”

“We do, indeed!” cried Bell, and the sunshine
nestled among her curls. “We do, indeed! because
God, like the good fairy in our story-book, comes
in sunlight, or hides in flowers; and he reveals
himself in ever so many ways, to all who love
him.”

“Hides in flowers,” repeated the boy, musingly;
“I never thought of that. Then, perhaps—only
perhaps—the dew-drops which I showed you last
night in the white japonica were God's eyes!”

“May be so,” returned Bell, simply.

They were two strange children—nature, and,
perhaps, circumstances had made them so. They
were born and had always lived in the old house.
Their mother was in heaven, and their father was
one of those who go down to the sea in ships.
With no one to teach them, save the old house-keeper
Nanny, their minds had taken odd turns

and conceits; they had grown up old people in a
hundred ways.

The roar of the winds and the sea had been in
their ears from infancy. In the summer months
they wandered late on the sandy beaches, or slept
with the silent sunshine under the cherry trees.
They had grown up with nature, and nature beat
in them like another heart. She had imbued them
with her richer and tenderer moods.

Bell was the wildest and strangest of the two.
She was one of those ærial little creatures who,
somehow or other, get into this world sometimes—it
must be by slipping through the fingers
of the angels, for they seem strangely out of place,
and I am sure that they are missed somewhere!
They never stay long! They come to earth and
sometimes ripen for heaven in a twelve month!
The sweetest flowers are those that die in the
spring-time: they touch the world with beauty, and
are gone, before a ruder breath than that of God
scatters their perfume. Bell was a Gipsy angel—
one of those who wander, for awhile, outside the
walls of heaven, in the shady pastures and by-ways
of the world.

“Mortimer,” said Bell, after a long silence, “how
nice it is to sit here and watch the bits of sails coming
and going—coming and going, never weary!

I wonder how long we have sat at this window and
watched the white specks? I wonder if it will
always be so; if you and I will still be here, loving
the sea and stars, when our heads are as white as
Nanny's?”

“No!” cried the boy, impetuously. “I am going
out into the broad, deep world, and write books
full of wonderful thought, like the Arabian Nights!”

And he repeated it, the broad, deep world! Ah,
child! what have such dreamers as you to do in
the broad, deep world—the wonderful, restless sea,
where men cast the net of thought and bring up
pebbles?

“I would like that, Mort!” cried Bell, clapping
her hands. “But then, what a grand place this
would be to write them in! You can have your
desk by the open window here; and when your
eyes are tired, you can rest them on the sea. And
I will be so quiet—as gentle as pussy, even, and
do nothing but make pens for you all the time.
Wouldn't that be fine?”

“Yes! and father should go no more away in
ships. He might have a yacht to leap over the
surge in, to sail around all those little islands and
in the green bays; but never go off to sea. The
books I am going to write will bring us money
enough.”

So the little castle-builders talked until the sun
had melted into the waves, and twilight, like a
pilgrim that had been resting by the road-side, rose
up from the beach, and came slowly toward the
old house.

Mortimer, who had been gazing dreamily at the
beach—which grew fainter and fainter, till it seemed
like a white thread running through the selvage of
blue drapery—turned his eyes on Bell.

“Bell,” said he, quietly, “as you sit there in the
shadows, with your beautiful hair folded over your
forehead, you look like an angel!”

“Do I?”

“I can put my hand on your neck, yet you seem
far away from me.”

“Come, rest your head in my lap, Mort,” said the
girl, tenderly, “and I will tell you of a real true
angel who once came into this world.”

The chestnut locks of the boy looked darker
against her white dress, as Bell bent over him, and
commenced, in a low, silvery voice, an old angel
legend. She was in the midst of a strange description
of Paradise, when a tremulous voice came up
the stairway—

“Come to tea, children!”

Then the two looked at each other curiously. It
was so odd to be called to tea, and they in Heaven!

It was a long step from Paradise to the supper-table;
but the dream was shattered. Bell laughed.
Then they closed the window, and descended to the
room below, where Nanny had prepared the evening
meal of snowy bread and milk, and ripe purple
whortleberries. It was very queer to see the three
sitting at table—to see homely-looking, but kind-hearted
Nanny, between the two children, like a
twilight between two pleasant mornings.

When supper was over, and while Nanny was
washing the tea-things, the children went down to
the beach, shell hunting. The white moon stood directly
over the sea, and the waves were full of silvery
arrows, as if Diana had scattered them from her
quiver. Mortimer's eyes drank in the sight, as they
had a thousand times before, for Nature is ever new
to her lovers. In the measured roll of the sea, he
heard the diapason of a grand poem, and the far-off
thunder, heard now and then, was the chorus of the
gods.

But Heaven rapt the heart of little Bell! The
waves fell on her finer ear like subtlest music; to
her they were harps, and the fingers of angels were
touching them, while the thunder was “God walking
overhead!”

They wandered along the sands, picking up curious
shells and cream-white pebbles, dashed with red or

clouded with mazarine. Bell would hold them
up to her ear, and listen to the “little whispers,”
as she called them; but the boy would skim them
along the wave-tips, and shout when some great
billow caught one, and hurled it back scornfully at
his feet.

Bell saw a ridge of rocks which looked like the
back of a whale, running out some distance into
the sea, where the water was whiter and leaped
higher than anywhere else; and soon her dainty
feet picked a way over the jagged rocks. The boy
was about to send a light shell skipping through
the surf, when his glance caught Bell standing on
the highest jut of the ledge, the wind lifting her
long hair and the folds of her dress.

“Bell! Bell!”

“The stars are in the sea, brother,” she replied,
“and the winds are wild here.”

“Bell! Bell!”

“I cannot come to you. I fear to walk over the
rocks again! But it is beautiful here, and I am not
afraid!”

“Ah, Bell!” he spoke sadly, “that's what I dreamt.
I thought that there was a gulf between us, and
when I called, `Bell! Bell!' you answered, `I cannot
come to you, brother; but you can come to me!'
O, Bell—sister Bell! as you love me, come back. I

tremble when you look so like an angel. Come to
me, sister.”

Mortimer ran out on the slender bridge of stone
and led Bell back by the hand. After a little while
they heard Nanny calling them to come home.

The children occupied a small chamber over the
front door. A scented vine clomb all about the
window, and taught the ruddy sun at morning to
throw a subdued light into the room; and it broke
the orange stream of sunset. At night the dreamers
from their bed could see the stars hanging like
fruit among its cloudy leaves.

When Bell and Mortimer came up from the sea-beach,
the moonlight, breaking through this leafy
lattice, made the chamber as that of Abon Ben Adhem—“like
a lily in bloom.” Nanny brought a
lamp, and kissed them good-night.

“O, we don't want a lamp all this moon!” cried
Bell.

The boy sat half undressed at the window. “Bell
loves moonlight like a fairy,” he said.

Bell's robe fell to her knees in snowy folds, and
she stood like a petite Venus rising from the froth.
Then brother and sister braided their voices in a
simple prayer to Our Father in Heaven. They
prayed for kind old Nanny, and for one on the wide
sea.

“When will father come home?” asked Bell, for
the hundredth time that day.

“It will not be long now. When the boughs of
the cherry trees are an inch deep with ice, and
the logs crackle in the fire-place—then he will come.
Let us go to sleep, and dream of him.”

And thus, hand in hand, the two went in to
Dream-land—