The Old Homestead Part 39

"My goodness, if the little wretches have not destroyed that love of a hat with their tras.h.!.+ Oh, dear, put a beggar on horseback and only see how he will ride! Mr. Sharp, I did hope that the child could appreciate an article of millinery like that; but you see how it is, no just medium can be expected with this pauper taste; a long course of refinement is, I fear necessary to a just comprehension of the beautiful. Only think! two of Jarvis' most expensive marabouts crushed into nothingness by a good-for-nothing heap of, I don't know what, tangled about them! Really, it is enough to discourage one from ever doing a benevolent act again."

Judge Sharp strove to look decorously concerned, but spite of himself a quiet smile would tremble at the corners of the mouth, as he looked at the two marabout feathers flattened and crushed beneath the impromptu wreath.

"Whose work is it? Which of you twisted that thing over those feathers?" cried the lady angrily.

Isabel looked at Mary, but did not speak.

"It was me; I did it," said Mary, meekly. "The berries were so pretty, we never saw any before. Please, ma'am, look again, and see if the blue flowers there against the yellow don't look beautiful."

"Beautiful, indeed! What should you know of beauty, I wonder?" was the scornful answer, for Mrs. Farnham was by no means pleased that Mary had been forced into her company even for a single day's travel. "What on earth possesses a child like you, brought up, no matter where, to speak of this or that thing as pretty? What beautiful thing can you ever have seen?"

"I have seen the sky, ma'am, when it was full of bright stars. G.o.d lets poor people as well as rich ones look on the sky, you know; and isn't that beautiful?"

"Indeed! You think so, then?" said the lady.

"And we have seen many, many beautiful things besides that, haven't we, Isabel? One night, when it had been raining, in the winter--I remember it, oh, how well--while the great trees were dripping wet, out came the moon and stars bright, with a sharp frost, and then all the branches were hung with ice, in the moons.h.i.+ne, glittering and bending low toward the ground, just as if the starlight had all settled on the limbs and was loading them down with brightness. Oh, ma'am, I wish you could have seen it. I remember the ground was all one glare of ice; but I didn't mind that."

"I'm afraid your ward will find his protege rather forward, Judge,"

said the lady, as Mary Fuller drew back, blus.h.i.+ng at her own eager description.

"I really don't know," answered the gentleman; "she seems to have made pretty good use of the few privileges awarded to her, and, really, there is some philosophy in it. When one finds nothing but G.o.d's sky unmonopolized, it is something for a child to make so much of that.

She has a pretty knack of sorting flowers, too, as you may see by the fas.h.i.+on in which that is twisted. After all, madam, let us each make the most of our favorites. Yours is pretty enough, in all conscience Fred's will give satisfaction where she goes, I dare say."

Judge Sharp was becoming rather weary of his companion again, and so leaned out of the window, as was his usual habit, amusing himself by searching for the first red leaves among the maple foliage, and watching the shadows as they fell softly down the hemlock hollows.

CHAPTER XXV.

A PLEASANT CONVERSATION.

Like the patter of rain in a damp heavy day, Or the voice of a brook when its waters are low, That murmurs and murmurs and murmurs away-- Was the sound of her words in their meaningless flow.

After a while, finding that Mrs. Farnham was still talking at the children, and dealing him a sharp sentence or two over their shoulders, for preferring the scenery to her conversation, the Judge quietly drew in his head, and gathering up a quant.i.ty of the flowers, arranged a pretty bouquet for each of the little girls, who received them with shy satisfaction.

Then with more effort at arrangement, he completed a third bouquet, and laid it on Mrs. Farnham's lap with affected diffidence, that went directly to that very weak portion of the lady's system, which she dignified with the name of heart.

Enoch Sharp smiled at the effect of his adroit attention, while the lady, appeased into a state of gentle self-complacency, rewarded him with beaming smiles and a fresh avalanche of those soft frothy words, which she solemnly believed were conversation. From time to time she refreshed herself with the perfume of his mountain flowers, descanted on their beauties with sentimental warmth, and murmured s.n.a.t.c.hes of poetry over them, very soft, very sentimental, and particularly annoying to a man filled in all the depths of his soul with an honest love of nature.

"I wish my ward could have seen the old place before he went to college," observed the Judge, adroitly seizing upon a pause in this cataract of words, and making a desperate effort to change the subject. "He will find Harvard rather dull, I fear, at first."

The Judge was unfortunate. His choice of subject reminded Mrs. Farnham of an old grievance, and that day she was ambitious to establish herself a character for martyrdom.

"Yes," she answered, "I'm sure he will, but Fred would go. I knew they'd make a Unitarian of him or something of that sort, and the way I pleaded would have touched a heart of stone, I'm sure.

"'It was in your father's family,' said I, 'to lean towards what they called liberal views, but I, your mother, Fred, I am firm on the other side, orthodox, settled like a rock in that particular--though it has been said that in other things, the affections for instance--I'm more like a dove.'"

Here Mrs. Farnham settled the folds of her travelling dress with both hands, as if the dove had taken a fancy to smooth its plumage.

"Well, as I was saying to Fred, sir, 'go to Yale, don't think of Harvard, but go to Yale. There you will get a granite foundation for your religion--everything solid and sound there--go to Yale, my son.'

"It was in this way I reasoned, sir, but Fred has a good deal of his father in him, stubborn, Judge--stubborn as a--a mule, if you will excuse me mentioning that animal to a gentleman who keeps such horses as you do."

The Judge bowed. The love of a fine horse was one of his characteristics; he rather enjoyed the compliment.

His bow set Mrs. Farnham off again with double power.

"'You won't go to Yale,' said I, 'and you will go to Harvard. Let us strike a medium, Fred, a happy medium is the most pleasant thing in the world--go to Harvard one year, the next to Yale, then, sir, I thought of your church--' and, said I, 'finish off at old Columbia, it'll be a compliment to your guardian.'"

"Thank you," said the Judge, with a demure smile; "thank you for remembering my church so kindly; but what did my ward say to this?"

"Why, sir, would you believe it, he answered in the most disrespectful manner, that he went to college to got an education, and Harvard was good enough for that.

"'But,' said I, 'take my medium and you will try Harvard, and Yale, and old Columbia, too; only think what an introduction it would be into all sorts of the best religious society.'

"Well, sir, what do you think he did but laugh in the most irreverent manner, and ask me if I couldn't point out a Universalist inst.i.tution that he could finish up at. I declare, Judge, it almost broke my heart."

"Well, well, let us hope it will all turn out right," answered the Judge, consolingly--"look, madam, look, what a lovely hollow that is!"

They were now descending the mountain pa.s.ses. Broken hills and lovely green valleys rose and sunk along their rapid progress. Never on earth was scenery more varied and lovely. Little emerald hollows shaded with hemlock, overhanging brooklets that came stealing like broken diamond threads down the mountain sides to hide beneath their shadows, were constantly appearing and disappearing along the road.

It was impossible for little Mary to sit still when these heavenly glimpses presented themselves. Her cheeks burned, her eyes kindled; her very limbs trembled with suppressed impatience; but she dared not lean forward, and could only obtain tantalizing glances of the sparkling brooks, and the soft, green mosses that clung around the mountain cliffs where they shot over the road.

They pa.s.sed through several villages, winding in and out through mountain pa.s.ses, where the hills were so interlapped that it seemed impossible to guess how the carriage would extricate itself from the green labyrinth.

Nothing could be more delicate and vivid than the foliage that clothed the hill-sides, for the primeval growth of hemlocks had been cut away from the hills, and a second crop of luxuriant young trees, beech, oak, and maple, mottled with rich cl.u.s.ters of mountain ash, and the deep green of white pines, covered the whole country.

All at once the coachman drew up his horses on a curve of the highway.

The carriage was completely buried in a valley along which wound the river, whose sweet noise they had long heard among the trees.

"Now children, look out," said the Judge, laughing pleasantly; "look out and tell me how we are to get through the hills."

Both the little girls sprang forward and looked abroad breathlessly, like birds at the open door of a cage in which they had been imprisoned. The Judge watched them with smiling satisfaction as they cast puzzled glances from side to side, meeting nothing but shoulders and angles and ridges of the mountains heaving over each other in huge green waves that seemed to be endless, and to crowd close to each other, though many a lovely valley lay between, little dreamed of by the wondering children.

"Well, then, tell me how you expect to get out, little ones?" repeated the Judge.

"Sure enough, how?" repeated Isabel, drawing back, and looking from the Judge to Mrs. Farnham.

But Mary was still gazing abroad. Her eyes wandered from hill to hill, and grew more and more luminous as each new beauty broke upon her. At last she drew back with a deep breath, and the loveliest of human smiles upon her face.

"Indeed, sir, indeed I shouldn't care if we never did get out, the river would be company enough."

"Yes, company enough," replied the Judge, smiling. "But would it feed us when we are hungry?"

"It don't seem as if I ever should be hungry here," replied the child.

"But I am hungry now," replied Enoch Sharp; "and so is Mrs. Farnham, I dare say!"