As I write these last lines I look out through the mullioned window over the quaint old-world garden to a line of golden sand and a distant streak of silver sea, for my wildest dreams are realized: Father has taken Wyngates, and the deserted house, where Cathy and I wandered on that spring morning, is now my home. The large fireplaces blaze with the most hospitable of log fires; the clipped yew hedges are neatly trimmed; the beds are gay with flowers, and I have planted a border of white lilies round the sun-dial in the ladies' pleasaunce. Philippa Lovell's room is my special sanctum, where I keep my books and my work, and her laughing face smiles down upon me as if she were glad that young life has returned to the old place once more. The Winstanleys are our dearest friends, and very few days pass without a meeting between us. Cathy and I have just left school, and I am settling down in dead earnest to master the mysteries of housekeeping, and to supply to my father that dear place which my mother left empty long ago. We do not want to fritter away our lives in that aimless fashion which girls sometimes do when school-days are over, and we have many plans for our own and the village improvement. Strange to say, Edward, just through college, is here at one with us. He has forgotten his dandy ways, and his drawl, and is the foremost in organizing a Boys' Brigade, or running a reading-room, qualifying, as Dick irreverently puts it, for a "thorough-going out-and-out kind of a parson chap". George is at sea, and, from the accounts of his adventures, the ringleader of a lively crew of harum-scarum middies, whose escapades outrival even the pranks which he and Dick played long ago. His great desire seems to be that a war should break out to give him an opportunity of displaying his courage.
I love Wyngates with my whole heart; no spot on earth seems more beautiful to me, and I would not change its hills and its fresh breezes for all the brightness of southern skies. Our old home and all its associations are not forgotten, however, for Juanita, now married to Pedro, sends us kindly messages from her orange-farm on the sierras, and Tasso, whose devotion to my father led him to follow him over the seas, is with us now, the most faithful of servants and the staunchest of friends.
With those I hold dearest near me, my cup of happiness seems full, and my father says that the little foreign plant which he sent over so long ago to harden in our gray northern clime has taken root, and changed from a tropical blossom into an English rose.
Transcriber's Notes:
Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation and spelling has been retained as in the original publication except the following:
Page 48
but the loudest and noisest changed to
but the loudest and [noisiest]
Page 107
familar figure of Britannia changed to
[familiar] figure of Britannia
Page 111
addresed the envelope on _changed to_
[addressed] the envelope on