There was something hearty and patriarchal in this welcome of the father. The noble old Christian that forgave his prodigal son must have spoken much after the same fashion.
They shook hands—the father and son—with a firm, lingering clasp, while the mother looked on, smiling through her tears. With your genuine New England housemother, hospitality is always the servitor of affection. The night dew lay heavily on her son's garments. He looked pale and tired. The mother's heart rose pitifully in her bosom; she insisted upon raking open the fire, and getting a warm cup of tea; even went so far as to offer a cider-brandy sling, with toasted crackers floating on the top.
Thrasher yielded himself to her tender care. It was wonderful how submissive and grateful that strong-willed man had become under womanly influences. He declined tea, but accepted the glass of smoking drink which the mother prepared. Soon the old man took a tumbler, also, and praised it greatly; for religious men and elders of the church, in those times, thought it no sin to make themselves comfortable with a glass of hot drink before bedtime, never dreaming that their limited indulgence might lead to excess in the coming generation—excess which even legal enactments have failed to remedy. Having no fear and no conscientious scruples on the subject, the old man enjoyed his glass, and filled that of his son more than once; for, somehow, the color would not come genially to the young man's face, and after the first glow of his reception had passed off, he seemed depressed, almost gloomy.
The old lady took her seat again on the patchwork cushion of blue and red cloth which Thrasher could remember from his childhood, and attempted to resume her knitting; but the plump little hands trembled so much that she gave it up, and drawing back into the shadow, had a sweet, motherly cry all to herself. It was pleasant to hear those two voices blending together in their talk. It was heaven to know that the whole family sat on one hearth again. She could not be thankful enough. What had she done to merit so much happiness at the hands of the Lord.
This pious under-current of feelings mingled with the conversation as it went on between the two men, leaping rapidly from subject to subject, as always happens when members of one family have been long separated. While the mother was wrapped in dreamy thanksgivings, the old man, not less grateful or affectionate, fell to questioning his son about his voyage, the fate of the ship, and the terrible scenes which had been enacted at St. Domingo, while she lay in the harbor of Port au Prince.
Thrasher went into the thrilling details. He was naturally eloquent, and the intense interest manifested by his parents, made his pictures as graphic as the reality; but another person might have remarked, though his parents did not, that he avoided mentioning either his own share or that of Captain Mason in these exciting events.
"But how long did this last, Nelson? Was the brig kept in harbor all the time? Some of the neighbors began to fear that she was lost; but your mother and I hoped and prayed, didn't we, mother?"
The mother smiled on her son, answering:
"Nelson always knows that we hope and pray when he is upon the great deep."
"But where is the brig now; at her port?" questioned the father, after a brief pause.