And Brother Ned, who as usual has been keeping the conversation exclusively to himself, shakes his head and his stick at quiet old Ben, as together they pass out of the garden gate and trot down the road towards "The Rookery."
CHAPTER XII.
A NEW HOME.
Three weeks have passed, and Honor and Molly have just stepped out of the old station fly at the door of their new abode, possession of which they are to take that very day. There have been not a few expeditions backwards and forwards from town; but now everything is settled, the house ready for their reception, and the furniture actually on its way. The two girls are standing on the steps watching the driver, who, with the assistance of Jane, is bringing their trunks and boxes into the hall. Although the deep, heavy mourning of the sisters tells of their recent bereavement, the sorrowful look which seemed to have settled on their young faces but a few weeks since has now passed away; for at fifteen and seventeen the spirits are elastic, and however sharp and painful the grief may be at first, the buoyancy of youth soon asserts itself, and the trouble melts away into the past, ere long resembling a dream which, though vivid at the time, gradually becomes more shadowy and indistinct as time rolls on.
"I can't think why some of the boys didn't come down with us," remarks Molly rather crossly, as she kneels down and unfastens the cords of a hamper in which her pet cat is packed. "Now they really would have been of use to-day, whereas, whenever they came with us before, they seemed to do nothing but get in the way."
"O, Molly!" remonstrates Honor, "how can you say so? Look how beautifully Hugh trained all the creepers over the front of the house; and I'm sure it must have been a work of patience too, for they were in a fearful tangle. It quite distressed those nice old gentlemen to see how persistently Hugh worked at them; but they were simply delighted when they were done. They told me afterwards that they were most anxious to save him the trouble by sending in their own gardener to do it; but Hugh was determined, so they let him have his own way."
Molly shakes her head as, with Timothy now enthroned upon her shoulder, she gazes out of the open door.
"Boys are always a nuisance, more or less," she observes, "though I don't deny that I like them well enough in their place; and of course I allow that Hugh has fastened up the creepers well, especially the yellow jasmine."
Molly says this quite magnanimously, and is about to descend the steps with a view to receiving an armful of the small packages now being extricated from the interior of the fly, when a loud knocking from inside the house suddenly startles both the girls into a listening attitude.
"Hark!" says Molly with finger on lip, "it's the family ghost coming down to receive us! Not our ghost—the late occupant's, you know. Listen! there it is again. Who'll come up with me to see who or what it is? It sounds from the attics."