We and our neighbors, or, The records of an unfashionable street ::

“Well, I 'm going to take the old fortress over the
way by storm, this very morning. I 'm going to rush
through the breach that Jack has opened into the very
interior and see what there is there. I 'm perfectly dying
to get the run of that funny old house; why, Harry,
it 's just like a novel, and I should n't wonder if I could
get enough out of it for you to make an article of.”

“Thank you, dear; you enter into the spirit of article-hunting
like one to the manner born.”

“That I do; I 'm always keeping my eyes open when
I go about New York for bits and hints that you can
work up, and I 'm sure you ought to do something with
this old Vanderheyden house. I know there must be
ghosts in it; I 'm perfectly certain.”

“But you would n't meet them in a morning call,”
said Harry, “that 's contrary to all ghostly etiquette.”

“Never mind, I 'll get track of them. I 'll become
intimate with old Miss Dorcas and get her to relate her
history, and if there is a ghost-chamber I 'll be into it.”

“Well, success to you,” said Harry; “but to me it
looks like a formidable undertaking. Those old ladies
are so padded and wadded in buckram.”

“Oh, pshaw! there 's just what Jack has done for me,

he has made a breach in the padding and buckram.
Only think of my seeing them at midnight in their night-caps!
And such funny night-caps! Why, it 's an occasion
long to be remembered, and I would be willing to
wager anything they are talking it over at this minute;
and, of course, you see, it 's extremely proper and quite
a part of the play that I should come in this morning to
inquire after the wanderer, and to hope they did n't catch
cold, and to talk over the matter generally. Now, I like
that old Miss Dorcas; there seems to me to be an immense
amount of character behind all her starch and
stiffness, and I think she 's quite worth knowing. She 'll
be an acquisition if one can only get at her.”

“Well, as I said, success and prosperity go with you!”
said Harry, as he rose and gathered his papers to go to
his morning work.

“I 'll go right out with you,” said Eva, and she
snatched from the hat-tree a shawl and a little morsel of
white, fleecy worsted, which the initiated surname “a
cloud,” and tied it over her head. “I 'm going right in
upon them now,” she said.

It was a brisk, frosty morning, and she went out with
Harry and darted across from the door. He saw her in
the distance, as he went down the street, laughing and
kissing her hand to him on the door-step of the Vanderheyden
house.

Just then the sound of the door-bell—unheard of in
that hour in the morning—caused an excitement in the
back breakfast-parlor, where Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey
were at a late breakfast, with old Dinah standing
behind Miss Dorcas' chair to get her morning orders,
giggling and disputing them inch by inch, as was her
ordinary wont.

The old door-bell had a rustling, harsh, rusty sound,
as if cross with a chronic rheumatism of disuse.

“Who under the sun!” said Miss Dorcas. “Jack, be
still!”

But Jack would n't be still, but ran and snuffed at
the door, and barked as if he smelt a legion of burglars.

Eva heard, within the house, the dining-room door
open, and then Jack's barking came like a fire of artillery
at the crack of the front door, where she was standing.
It was slowly opened, and old Dinah's giggling countenance
appeared. “Laws bless your soul, Mis' Henderson,”
she said, flinging the door wide open, “is that
you? Jack, be still, sir!”

But Eva had caught Jack up in her arms, and walked
with him to the door of the breakfast room.

“Do pray excuse me,” she said, “but I thought I'd
just run over and see that you had n't taken any cold.”

The scene within was not uninviting. There was a
cheerful wood fire burning on the hearth behind a pair
of gigantic old-fashioned brass fire-irons. The little
breakfast-table, with its bright old silver and India
china, was drawn comfortably up in front. Miss Dorcas
had her chair on one side, and Miss Betsey on the other,
and between them there was a chair drawn up for Jack,
where he had been sitting at the time the door-bell
rang.

“We are ashamed of our late hours,” said Miss Dorcas,
when she had made Eva sit down in an old-fashioned
claw-footed arm-chair in the warmest corner; “we
do n't usually breakfast so late, but, the fact is, Betsey
was quite done up by the adventure last night.”

“Perhaps,” said Eva, “I had better have tried keeping
Jack till morning.”

“Oh no, indeed, Mrs. Henderson,” said Mrs. Betsey,
with energy; “I know it's silly, but I should n't have
slept a wink all night if Jack had n't come home. You
know he sleeps with me,” she added.

Eva did not know it before, but she said “Yes” all
the same, and the good lady rushed on:

“Yes; Dorcas thinks it 's rather silly, but I do let
Jack sleep on the foot of my bed. I spread his blanket
for him every night, and I always wash his feet and wipe
them clean before he goes to bed, and when you brought
him back you really ought to have seen him run right up
stairs to where I keep his bowl and towel; and he stood
there, just as sensible, waiting for me to come and wash
him. I wish you could have seen how dirty he was! I
can't think where ever that dog gets his paws so
greasy.”

“'Cause he will eat out o' swill-pails!” interposed
Dinah, with a chuckle. “Greatest dog after swill-pails
I ever see. That's what he's off after.”

“Well, I don't know why. It 's very bad of him
when we always feed him and take such pains with
him,” said Mrs. Betsey, in accents of lamentation.

“Dogs is allers jest so,” said Dinah; “they 's arter
nastiness and carron. You can 't make a Christian out
o' a dog, no matter what you do.”

Old Dinah was the very impersonation of that coarse,
hard literalness which forces actual unpalatable facts
upon unwilling ears. There was no disputing that she
spoke most melancholy truths, that even the most infatuated
dog-lovers could not always shut their eyes to.
But Mrs. Betsey chose wholly to ignore her facts and
treat her communication as if it had no existence, so she
turned her back to Dinah and went on.

“I don't know what makes Jack have these turns of
running away. Sometimes I think it's our system of
dieting him. Perhaps it may be because we don 't allow
him all the meat he wants; but then they say if you do
give these pet dogs meat they become so gross that it is
quite shocking.”

Miss Dorcas rapped her snuff-box, sat back in her
chair, and took snuff with an air of antique dignity that
seemed to call heaven and earth to witness that she only
tolerated such fooleries on account of her sister, and not
at all in the way of personal approbation.

The nurture and admonition of Jack was the point
where the two sisters had a chronic controversy, Miss
Dorcas inclining to the side of strict discipline and vigorous
repression.

In fact, Miss Dorcas soothed her violated notions of
dignity and propriety by always speaking of Jack as
“Betsey's dog”—he was one of the permitted toys and
amusements of Betsey's more juvenile years; but she
felt called upon to keep some limits of discipline to prevent
Jack's paw from ruling too absolutely in the family
councils.

“You see,” said Mrs. Betsey, going on with her reminiscences
of yesterday, “we had taken Jack down town
with us because we wanted to get his photographs; we 'd
had him taken last week, and they were not ready till
yesterday.”

“Dear me, do show them to me,” said Eva, entering
cheerfully into the humor of the thing; and Mrs. Betsey
trotted up stairs to get them.

“You see how very absurd we are,” said Miss Dorcas;
“but the fact is, Mrs. Henderson, Betsey has had her
troubles, poor child, and I 'm glad to have her have anything
that can be any sort of a comfort to her.”

Betsey came back with her photographs, which she
exhibited with the most artless innocence.

“You see,” said Miss Dorcas, “just how it is. If
people set out to treat a dog as a child, they have to take
the consequences. That dog rules this whole family,
and of course he behaves like spoiled children generally.
Here, now, this morning; Betsey and I both have bad

colds because we were got out of bed last night with that
creature.”

Here Jack, seeming to understand that he was the
subject-matter of some criticism, rose up suddenly on his
haunches before Miss Dorcas and waved his paws in a
supplicatory manner at her. Jack understood this to be
his only strong point, and brought it out as a trump card
on all occasions when he felt himself to be out of favor.
Miss Dorcas laughed, as she generally did, and Jack
seemed delighted, and sprang into her lap and offered to
kiss her with the most brazen assurance.

“Oh, well, Mrs. Henderson, I suppose you see that
we are two old fools about that dog,” she said. “I
do n't know but I am almost as silly as Betsey is, but the
fact is one must have something, and a dog is not so
much risk as a boy, after all. Yes, Jack,” she said, tapping
his shaggy head patronizingly, “after all you 're no
more impudent than puppies in general.”

“I never quarrel with anyone for loving dogs,” said
Eva. “For my part I think no family is complete without
one. I tell Harry we must `set up' our dog as soon
as we get a little more settled. When we get one, we 'll
compare notes.”

“Well,” said Miss Dorcas, “I always comfort myself
with thinking that dear Sir Walter, with all his genius,
went as far in dog-petting as any of us. You remember
Washington Irving's visit to Abbotsford?”

Eva did not remember it, and Miss Dorcas said she
must get it for her at once; she ought to read it. And away
she went to look it up in the book-case in the next room.

“The fact is,” said Mrs. Betsey, mysteriously, “though
Dorcas has so much strength of mind, she is to the full
as silly about Jack as I am. When I was gone to Newburg,
if you 'll believe me, she let Jack sleep on her bed.
Dinah knows it, does n't she?”

Dinah confirmed this fact by a loud explosing, in
which there was a singular mixture of snort and giggle;
and to cover her paroxysm she seized violently on the remains
of the breakfast and bore them out into the kitchen,
and was heard giggling and gurgling in a rill of laughter
all along the way.

Mrs. Betsey began gathering up and arranging the
cups, and filling a lacquered bowl of Japanese fabric
with hot water, she proceeded to wash the china and
silver.

“What lovely china,” said Eva, with the air of a connoisseur.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Betsey, “this china has been in the
family for three generations, and we never suffer a servant
to touch it.”

“Please let me help you,” said Eva, taking up the
napkin sociably, “I do so love old china.”

And pretty soon one might have seen a gay morning
party—Mrs. Betsey washing, Eva wiping, and Miss Dorcas
the while reading scraps out of Abbotsford about
Maida, and Finette, and Hamlet, and Camp, and Percy,
and others of Walter Scott's four-footed friends. The
ice of ceremony and stiffness was not only broken by
this bit of morning domesticity, but floated gaily down-stream
never to be formed again.

You may go further into the hearts of your neighbors
by one-half hour of undressed rehearsal behind the scenes
than a century of ceremonious posing before the foot-lights.

Real people, with anything like heart and tastes and
emotions, do not enjoy being shut up behind barricades,
and conversing with their neighbors only through loopholes.
If any warm-hearted adventurer gets in at the
back door of the heart, the stiffest and most formal are
often the most thankful for the deliverance.

The advent of this pretty young creature, with her air
of joy and gaiety, into the shadowed and mossy precincts
of the old Vanderheyden house was an event to
be dated from, as the era of a new life. She was to
them a flower, a picture, a poem; and a thousand dear
remembrances and new capabilities stirred in the withered
old hearts to meet her.

Her sincere artlessness and naïf curiosity, her genuine
interest in the old time-worn furniture, relics and
belongings of the house gave them a new sense of possession.
We seem to acquire our things over again when
stimulated by the admiration of a new spectator.

“Dear me,” said Eva, as she put down a tea-cup she
was wiping, “what a pity I have n't some nice old china
to begin on! but all my things are spick and span new;
I do n't think it 's a bit interesting. I do love to see
things that look as if they had a history.”

“Ah! my dear child, you are making history fast
enough,” said Miss Dorcas, with that kind of half sigh
with which people at eighty look down on the aspirants
of twenty; “do n't try to hurry things.”

“But I think old things are so nice,” said Eva.
“They get so many associations. Things just out of
Tiffany's or Collamore's have n't associations—there 's no
poetry in them. Now, everything in your house has its
story. It 's just like the old villas I used to see in Italy
where the fountains were all mossy.”

“We are mossy enough, dear knows,” said Miss Dorcas,
laughing, “Betsey and I.”

“I 'm so glad I 've got acquainted with you,” said
Eva, looking up with clear, honest eyes into Miss Dorcas's
face; “it 's so lonesome not to know one's neighbors,
and I 'm an inexperienced beginner, you know. There
are a thousand questions I might ask, where your experience
could help me.”

“Well, do n't hesitate, dear Mrs. Henderson,” said
Mrs. Betsey; “do use us if you can. Dorcas is really
quite a doctor, and if you should be ill any time, do n't
fail to let us know. We never have a doctor. Dorcas
always knows just what to do. You ought to see her
herb closet—there 's a little of everything in it; and she
is wonderful for strengthening-mixtures.”

And so Eva was taken to see the herbal, and thence,
by natural progression, through the chambers, where she
admired the old furniture. Then cabinets were unlocked,
old curiosities brought out, snatches and bits of history
followed, and, in fact, lunch time came in the old Vanderheyden
house before any of them perceived whither
the tide of social enthusiasm had carried them. Eva
stayed to lunch. Such a thing had not happened for
years to the desolate old couple, and it really seemed as
if the roses of youth and joy, the flowers of years past,
all bloomed and breathed around her, and it was late in
the day before she returned to her own home to look
back on the Vanderheyden fortress as taken. Two stiff,
ceremonious strangers had become two warm-hearted,
admiring friends—a fortress locked and barred by constraint
had become an open door of friendship. Was it
not a good morning's work?

University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII. THE VANDERHEYDEN FORTRESS TAKEN.

8. CHAPTER VIII.
THE VANDERHEYDEN FORTRESS TAKEN.