University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

WE were happily resting from our long turmoil,—enjoying
the sweet quiet order of everything in and about
our new house; and the summer's luxuriance came wafted
through the open windows, and Kate was trying her harp-strings,
but softly as if half unwilling to lose the merry choir
without.

“If ye plase ma'am,” said one of our subordinates opening
the door after an admonitory tap, “Miss Caff'ry says,
when would ye be settled till ye'd come and drink ta with
her?”

“Has Miss Caffery sent up here, Caddie?”

“She did ma'am.”

“To ask if we were settled?”

“Well I don't just know, Mrs. Howard—it's wanting ye
she is—at ta.”

“And when does she want us to come?”

“Meself doesn't know, ma'am—if it wouldn't be the day.”

“Who brought the message, Caddie?” said I.

“He's a fine-looking lump of a boy, Miss Grace—with a
face as big as me two hands,—I don't know his name, nor
he didn't say.”

“Tell him to come upstairs,” said Mrs. Howard.

“That's what I did ma'am, and I couldn't get him into the
house itself.”

“And he didn't say when Miss Caffery wants us?” said
Kate.

“Never a word Miss, only he said, `it's a fine day,' says
he.”

“I suppose we must put that and that together,” said
Mrs. Howard laughing. “Caddie you may tell him—no I
will write it.”

“And are you going to-night mamma?” said Kate when
the note was despatched.

“Yes, that seems to have been the request.”

“If ye plase ma'am,” said Caddie returning, “he says all
the young ladies and Mrs. Howard and the master,—and
would you be plased to come at four o'clock, he says
ma'am.”

“We will be very punctual.”

“Well I am glad!” said I—“I do want to see some more
of Miss Caffery,—she is so very comical.”

“I wonder if there will be any one else there,” said Kate.

“I shall be there,” said Stephanie, “and will make you
laugh with everybody and at everybody too, if you choose.”

“I shall not choose—therefore give all your attention to
your own risible muscles.”

What a fair, bright walk we had! For a while there were
meadows and grain fields on either hand,—then two dark
points of forest ran down to the very edge of the road,—
then again came fields and distant woods with here and there
a house. One stood at the top of a high slope which came
gently down towards us, but at some little distance. The
turf was beautifully short and green, and the forest trees had
been judiciously cut and spared; the remaining ones, which
stood generally alone, had a fine roundness of form and luxuriance
of foliage of which their very shadows seemed to
speak. These spots of sober light set off the sunshine perfectly.
Then we passed a house at the very road-side,—
brown, unpainted, but having in its window a box of the
most beautiful “painted ladies” I ever saw. Then came a
little spring running swiftly under the stone wall by the
way of a latticed opening,—which lattice served the purpose
of a barrier to pigs and geese—they might not run
with the stream. And then we approached the place of our
destination.

“Caffre-land,” as Stephanie called it, was on a private
branch of the high road, which forking off towards the lake
ran along its shore for some distance, and then turned up to
the house. There was neither fence nor wall,—the little
cottage stood peacefully in the midst of its green lawn as if
marauders were never thought of; and certainly all looked
as if they never came.

The architecture was in no one style unless that of convenience
and comfort; though so far as the steep roof, projecting
rafters, and gable ends could make it, it was rather
Dutch. The windows were of every sort and situation that
a particular view or a particular breeze seemed to make
desirable. The front of the house had but one below stairs
—a large bay; over and about which a beautiful maurandia
hung its purple-blue flowers and abundant foliage. Above
this a long oval lookout, of which the sash was slid back into
the wall, let one see the waving white drapery beyond; and
higher still, a sharp gable reared itself from the roof, which
then sloped down until it overhung the bay's side companion,—the
little brown front door.

The house went by the name of `the Bird's Nest;'
though not at all wanting in size and accommodation, yet
something in its lichened grey stone and the substantial
compactness of its appearance—shadowed as it was by an
immense weeping elm on the other side of the road—made
the name seem not unsuitable.

The elm had been trimmed up to a great height, and
through its drooping branches the long sunbeams came from
the western horizon to the pretty bay window, unchecked
in winter; but now softened by the leafy covert through
which they passed. And from among the foliage there shot
now and then a gleam like fire, as two Baltimore birds or
orioles, darted about their nest which swayed gently to and
fro on one of the long weeping branches.

All this we took in ere we reached the door. It is opened
to us, and we have entered the hall which runs straight
through to the back of the house. It is narrow, and the
rafters stand out in full relief; but at the side is a large
Venetian window, of which the broad centre compartment
opens like a door upon the flower garden. And here come
in the south breezes—freighted with all the bouquets that

ever perfumer tried to imitate. I said there was no fence,
but this garden was hedged with the Cherokee rose,—then
covered with multitudes of its large buff-centred white flowers.
We were in danger of forgetting that we had come to
see anything else; but Miss Caffery did not wait long before
she came behind us with,

“Yes ma'am, it is very pretty, but you must all be so
tired,—do come and sit down. My dear Miss Grace, I am
so glad to see you! yes, very glad. And these other
young ladies—they are most welcome,—yes ma'am, they
are indeed. But my dear Mrs. Howard do come into the
parlour.”

The same pink handkerchief, the same spotless dress, only
of finer muslin this time, and the handkerchief had a shade
more pink and a half-inch more fringe. But I liked the
wearer's looks much better upon a second view. Miss
Caffery was not young, but she had taken Time so pleasantly
that Time had returned the compliment. Her hair—
still unchanged—was of so soft a colour, so neatly parted;
her whole voice and action were so gentle and truthful;
that one would at a venture have joined her in saying “yes
ma'am” to everything she uttered. Perfect repose as her
eye was, it was not the repose of shallow water; and her
mouth was eminently sympathetic.

Very different was her cousin, Miss Avarintha Bain. Tall,
dark, with hair so black that one wondered where the colour
came from; some mental fever shining out through every
feature,—more display in her dress and more manner in
her mannerism, Miss Bain acted the au fait in everything;
and the perfect delusion which she put upon herself in this
respect, made her to be sure, good-humoured and satisfied.

There were other visiters already in the room; so when
the first little bustle was over, I, the only child there, had
time to look about me. Except Miss Caffery and my own
family there was very little to detain my eye among the
animated objects, and it presently wandered to the inanimate,—they
were more satisfactory. A bookcase on one
side, a like case of varieties on the other, flanked the chimney
and completely filled up the recesses; while in the
fireplace itself little brass musketeers mounted guard as
andirons. All the wood of the room—cases, furniture, and

wainscotting—was very dark; and the high range of the
latter contrasted well with the hard finish above. On this
hung one or two old portraits—telling amid all their silence
that the hopes and fears of the present generation are no
brighter, no darker, than those of a century ago,—which
have passed without leaving a trace except upon some such
bit of canvass. It is a hard thing to realize, that just such a
face appeared in “this working-day world,” when that world
was two hundred years younger than it is now!—It is like
seeing that mysterious sort of shadow where the substance
is out of sight. But the child's eye and mind soon left the
stately lady for something with which they had more sympathy.

Instead of a table in the middle of the floor, there stood a
pyramid of basket-work,—dark like the other articles, and
rising tier above tier from a broad base to a little nest at
the top, where was a cluster of roses,—crimson, white, and
blush. Mignionette and ivy, honeysuckle, multifloras and
alyssum, looked over the side of each tier upon a bed of
heliotrope, geranium, yellow roses, and all the variety of
spray flowers and buds that make such beautiful filagree-work
about those that are larger and more showy.

Opposite the bay a glass door looked into the tea-room;
and thither my eyes had just gone—caught by a bright
gleam of silver—when Miss Caffery left her older guests
and called me to come and sit by her in the window. And
for a while she talks and I listen,—pleased to hear the gentle
voice even when it tells me a bird or flower story that I
knew before. And then we both listen, for a horse's hoofs
are coming up the road very fast. They come nearer and
nearer, even to the very window where we are sitting, and
then I see that the rider is my friend of the bar-place. He
bowed to Miss Caffery, then smilingly recognized me, and
then, still hat in hand, said,

“Have you anything for the post-office, Miss Easy?”

“Not to-day, Mr. Collingwood. But you are not going
to the post-office? you must stay with us sir, you must
indeed. We want you very much, yes.”

“Thank you Miss Easy, but”—

“O don't give us any buts or ifs,” said Miss Avarintha
coming up: “I daresay you're very busy—you always are,—

but `when a lady's in the case' you know, and there are half
a dozen in this.”

“I am afraid `Ladies first and business afterwards' would
not be a very good rule for me,” said Mr. Collingwood
smiling.

“O Mr. Rodney! for shame!—and these such young
ladies and you such a young gentleman! Why you deserve
to be posted up. Here is Miss Howard and Miss Holbrook
and Miss Suydam, and you are leaving the field all to
Captain De Camp.”

Mr. Collingwood sat contemplating his horse's head so
quietly, that except for some slight play of the lines of his
face I should hardly have thought his hearing very good;
and then looking up with a smile as pleasant as peculiar, he
said,

“Well, Miss Avarintha, I am just such a young gentleman—very
busy, very odd I suppose; but what will you do
with me?—I must go to the post-office, and then across the
country to Squire Brown's for my father, and then home to
write.”

“Now Mr. Rodney,” said Miss Easy earnestly, “that is
the very thing;—yes sir, you oughtn't to write a bit more,
not a bit. You're as pale as your paper, yes.”

“My ride ought to have cured that, Miss Easy.”

“It hasn't”—she said, with an answering but not assenting
smile. “Now be kind-hearted—and go to the post-office
and Squire Brown's, and then come back here and mend my
knitting needle and drink coffee and tell me all about your
dear father. I tried to get to see him to-day, but the sun
was so hot I couldn't—and I knew you'd be here or I should
have sent for you, yes,—and what Mr. Carvill said in his last
letter. It will do you more good than writing.”

Mr. Collingwood bowed with one grateful appreciating
glance, and saying “If I can, dear Miss Easy,” he rode off.

Miss Easy looked after him with an unusual shade on
her placid face, but Miss Avarintha walked away; and then
up came my stepmother.

“Dear Miss Caffery,” she said, “I fear Grace is keeping
you here,—do let her amuse herself.”

“O yes,” said Miss Easy, “but I like to talk to her—yes
ma'am, very much.”

“But the wind comes in so fresh—and your face —”

“My face?—O yes ma'am,” said Miss Caffery smiling
most good-naturedly, “to be sure! you thought I had the
faceache, yes. But I always wear this handkerchief ma'am
—I do indeed.”

“O I beg your pardon!” said Mrs. Howard, quite shocked
at her mistake.

“No ma'am, pray don't. You see,” continued Miss Easy,
so much interested in her story that she forgot the accustomed
refrain; “you see when Avarintha first came to live
with me I never could arrange my back hair as she liked—
because I wasn't a spider, with eyes at the back of my head
—as I told her, ma'am; and every day she would say to me,
`O Easy! your hair does look so!'—and at last she said
that if she were in my place she would wear a nightcap or a
handkerchief, rather than let people see such a twist on her
head. So I told her I wouldn't wear a nightcap, for I didn't
think nightcaps were becoming; but I would wear a handkerchief
and welcome,—and I always have, ma'am, ever
since.”

“I am sure you were very obliging.”

“O no ma'am—not at all. Indeed, yes,” said Miss Easy,
“it was as much for my comfort as hers, yes ma'am; for
I was as tired of the back of my head as she was.”

When Mr. Collingwood came back Miss Easy was in the
glittering and aromatic region of the tea-table; but Miss
Avarintha pounced upon him at once, passed her arm through
his, and walked him round a circle of introductions and
greeting. Even I could not but notice the well-bred quietness
with which he met all her showing-off attempts—they
seemed to disturb nothing but the corners of his mouth;
and when the circuit was made he walked into the tea-room,
and receiving his cup of coffee from Miss Easy stood talking
to her for some time.

“Mr. Rodney,” said Miss Bain the moment he returned,
and pointing out a place somewhat antagonistic to Captain
De Camp who was talking to Kate. “Mr. Rodney, there
is an unoccupied chair.”

“But here is an unoccupied lady,” said Mr. Rodney as he
crossed the room and seated himself by poor little me;

“and a lady in a dream I should judge. Miss Grace, is it
allowable to wake you up?”

“Me! O I was not asleep, sir.”

“May I inquire then upon what profound subject your
waking thoughts were employed?”

“I am afraid you would think me very rude, or impertinent,
sir.”

“No, I will promise not beforehand.”

“Ah but you don't know, sir—I am sure you would say
I had better have been thinking of something else.”

“Possibly,” he said, with a smile,—“but if that be the
case you may as well let me give you an opinion, and then
you will know for next time.”

He had a frank way that was very catching.

“I was thinking sir, I was wondering who you could be.”

What a merry laugh greeted this speech!

“Upon my word,” he said, “I don't wonder you looked
abstracted! And you would like to be helped out of the
difficulty? But I should think you might have heard my
name half a dozen times at the window a while ago,—you
seemed wide awake enough then.”

“Yes sir, I thought I did hear it; but then they seemed
to call you something else, and that puzzled me.”

“They did call me something else; but you see I take the
benefit of both my names—not having your conscientious
scruples on the score of cadetship,—I am Rodney Collingwood.
And now to change the subject, or rather the application,
suppose you tell me your little cat's name—that I
may make no mistake in future.”

I hesitated.

“Hasn't she got one yet?”

“Yes sir, but—I didn't call her what you advised me to,
Mr. Collingwood.”

“Never mind that—I do not expect to have my advice
followed in most cases,—only tell me what you did call
her.”

“Why sir, Kate brought a little white cat from Kellerton,
and it cried all the time for a day or two, and Kate declared
she would call it `Mew'; and then I said if she did I would
call mine `Purrer-purrer'.”

“Why at that rate,” said Mr. Collingwood laughing, “I
should have called Wolfgang `Bow-wow' or `Barky-barky'.”
—And how we both laughed then!

“Is his name Wolfgang?” I said.

“Yes,—don't you think he's a fine fellow?”

“O very!—but Mr. Collingwood—”

“Well?”

“Why don't you teach him not to kill cats?”

“He has been taught—he never does kill them. But,”
continued Mr. Collingwood with a smile, “little Purrer-purrer
did not know that—there was the whole difficulty.
If she had staid in your lap Wolfgang would not have looked
at her; but a dog will almost always chase any animal that
runs from him.”

“Then it was well I didn't run too.”

“I did not mean to include you in the animal class,—I
hope Wolfgang would have had so much or so little sense
as to prefer the cat.”

“The cat is very nice sir, indeed.”

“No doubt of it!” he said with a grave look of amusement.
“Does she ride out every day in the little carriage
your arms make for her?”

“It isn't quite fair for everybody to laugh at me about
the cat,” I said, but laughing myself. “I haven't taken her
out in a great while,—indeed—”

“Indeed you were afraid of another fright?”

“Yes sir, a little. But that hasn't been all the reason,
Mr. Collingwood,—since Kate came home I have had her to
think of—and you know I would rather hold her hand than
the cat.”

“How should I know that?”

“O to be sure”—I said;—“but you would if you knew
her—I forgot that you didn't, sir.”

“My remark referred only to you—not at all to your
sister. But tell me Miss Gracie, have you so far forgiven
Wolfgang that you will let me bring him to see you some
day?”

“O yes sir! I wish you would! we should be so glad.—
You know you can come through the bar-place, and then it
will not give you a long walk.”

He smiled at this; but then Miss Avarintha came up,
saying,

“Mr. Collingwood, you do look so entertaining and agreeable
that you must absolutely come and talk to me.”

And she kept him in the bay-window until we came
away.