And such a woman!
She had on a cotton gown,—very neat, I dare say, for an under-housemaid; and such thick shoes! She had on a little black straw bonnet; and a kerchief, that might have cost tenpence, pinned across her waist instead of a shawl; and she looked altogether-respectable, no doubt, but exceedingly dusty! And she was hanging upon Leonard’s neck, and scolding, and caressing, and crying very loud. “God bless my soul!” said Mr. Richard Avenel.
And as he uttered that innocent self-benediction, the woman hastily turned round, and darting from Leonard, threw herself right upon Richard Avenel—burying under her embrace blue-coat, moss rose, white waistcoat and all—with a vehement sob and a loud exclamation!
“Oh! brother Dick!—dear, dear brother Dick! And I lives to see thee agin!” And then came two such kisses—you might have heard them a mile off! The situation of brother Dick was appalling; and the crowd, that had before only tittered politely, could not now resist the effect of this sudden embrace. There was a general explosion! It was a roar! That roar would have killed a weak man; but it sounded to the strong heart of Richard Avenel like the defiance of a foe, and it plucked forth in an instant from all conventional let and barrier the native spirit of the Anglo-Saxon.
He lifted abruptly his handsome masculine head, and looked round the ring of his ill-bred visitors with a haughty stare of rebuke and surprise.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” then said he, very coolly, “I don’t see what there is to laugh at! A brother and sister meet after many years’ separation, and the sister cries, poor thing. For my part I think it very natural that she should cry; but not that you should laugh!”
In an instant the whole shame was removed from Richard Avenel, and rested in full weight upon the bystanders. It is impossible to say how foolish and sheepish they all looked, nor how slinkingly each tried to creep off.
Richard Avenel seized his advantage with the promptitude of a man who had got on in America, and was, therefore, accustomed to make the best of things. He drew Mrs. Fairfield’s arm in his, and led her into the house; but when he had got her safe into his parlour—Leonard following all the time—and the door was closed upon those three, then Richard Avenel’s ire burst forth.
“You impudent, ungrateful, audacious—drab!”
Yes, drab was the word. I am shocked to say it, but the duties of a historian are stern: and the word was drab.