“So he did, Kitty; so he did,” he replied, gaily. “And the wool has sold well, too. So spend what you like; I can afford it, my dear.”
We crossed the Channel at last, in rough weather, and arrived at Charing Cross on a cool evening of early summer, where we found uncle Goodeve’s carriage waiting for us, with aunt Alice sitting in it. My uncle, who met us on the platform, stout and smiling, with his hat in his hand, and his polished bald head rosy with excitement, gave us as warm a welcome as returned prodigals could desire—a little too warm, I fancied, for mother’s liking, under such very public circumstances. He was a merchant of London city, who was not ashamed of the trade that had made him wealthy. If anything, he was inclined to be rather ostentatious about that fourpenny-bit which he laid out in Covent Garden refuse when he was seven years old, and which was the foundation of his fortunes. He delighted to sit at a table groaning with solid plate and dainty dishes, and to declare that he had dined daily off a mutton chop and a pint of half-and-half for nearly twenty years, or—what was better—that “time was when he was thankful to make a meal of potato-parings.” He never failed to tell you, if you referred to him on certain every-day social and domestic questions, that he was a “plain man,” who had never had any time to attend to fal-lals. A plain man he was certainly, in more senses than one, but hearty and hospitable, and the very soul of all kindness. I “took to” uncle Goodeve from the first moment that I knew him, when he grasped my hand in both his own, and beamed on me with eyes which, if not quite a match for one another, and rather put in the shade by the breadth and substance of his cheeks, were most truly benevolent and fatherly. And he and I maintained, from first to last, an unwavering friendship for one another.
Aunt Alice was another matter. When the luggage, on two or three cabs, and uncle Goodeve and father in charge of it, had left us, and I found myself in the family brougham with the care of all such small matters as shawls and dressing-bags, sitting with my back to the horses, and my face to my mother and aunt, I could survey the latter with great advantage, and did not take long to make up my mind that I should not get on with her as well as I should with her husband. She had the advantage of him in being decidedly handsome in her own over-blown style. There was a strong likeness to father, but it was spoiled by an air of conscious importance that he could not have worn if he had been made king of England. She was enormously stout, and looked a great deal stouter in a sealskin jacket, bordered with sable; her face was full and florid, with at least three chins to it; and her bonnet, which was much higher and gayer than those we had seen in Paris, and perched far back on some braids at the crown of her head, did nothing to soften its too obtrusive outlines. She was so stout, so rosy, so magnificent in her dress, that she gave one the idea of being prosperous to repletion.
I ought to have admired her very much, for she was exceedingly kind and cordial, and it was pretty to see her ways to mother, who had been made much of in the Chamberlayne family in former days. She held her hand and coaxed it, and she gazed into her face, expressing again and again her wonder and pleasure to see her so little changed by all she had gone through.
“I suppose I look older, like the rest of us,” said mother, “but I have had no reason to be changed otherwise. I’m sure I can’t look careworn.”
“Yes,” said aunt Alice; “of course you look older, as who wouldn’t in seventeen years! But you are so like what you used to be—I don’t mean in not looking careworn; indeed, I can’t describe what I mean exactly. You don’t seem to have lost your old ways; and your style”—glancing at mother’s travelling dress—“is exactly what it always was, half Worth and half Quaker.”
Then she turned to make a careful survey of my personal appearance, and declared herself still more astonished that I was so unlike what she had expected me to be, after being brought up in the bush all my life. At which mother gazed out of the carriage window in placid dignity, to imply that it was an irrelevant remark, not requiring comment.
“Did you expect to see me black, aunt, and dressed in opossum skins?” I inquired.
“My dear, of course not. But I must say you look—well, very different from what I expected. A stranger would not guess that she had not been in London all her life, Mary,” she added in an encouraging tone, to mother.
“If I had been in London all my life,” said I, “I expect I should have been dead tired to-night, instead of feeling as fresh as if I had just got out of bed. Oh, mother, I hope there are some open spaces somewhere, where I can have a run sometimes, and a breath of fresh air!”