“God bless you, my lad, tell me now—tell me now,” said the soldier, and tears of joy had already gathered in his eyes.
“No, not another word now,” said Edward, bounding away from him; “in one hour you shall know all.”
The soldier gazed after Edward with an intense curiosity: vague expectations of some good, and then more defined hopes filled his mind. ‘That boy never could have deceived me,’ he said, to himself: ‘what did he mean by exclaiming when he first heard my name? what, by saying he knew another Richard Barton? Is it possible that he has seen my wife and boy?’ The result of all his deliberations was, that he would go instantly to the Hotel—to wait an hour was impossible—an hour was an age. In the mean time, Edward joined his party, who were already on the return, and was chid for his delay; without giving the least heed to the rebuke, he drew Julia aside, and communicated his discovery to her. They then laid their heads together, and concerted a fine plan for a denouement.
They would first show Barton the little girl; he could not remember her of course, for she had been born some months after he was separated from his wife; but then he might find her out from her resemblance to her mother; Julia remembered many stories she had read of similar discoveries, and Edward affirmed his belief in natural affection, though he allowed that his father said, that Dr. Franklin and many other philosophers laughed at the idea. If the little girl proved an insufficient clew, Dickey was to be brought into the room, as if accidentally, and with many cautions by no means to tell his name; and finally the door was to be thrown open, and good Mrs. Barton, all unprepared for the sight, was to behold her long-lost husband. Mrs. Sackville saw in the truth-telling faces of her children, that something in their view very important was in agitation; but she seemed to take no notice of their whisperings, and hurried pace, till Mr. Morris called out, “Fall back children, one would think we were walking for a wager; remember we carry weight of years.”
“Oh,” whispered Julia, “uncle Morris is such a snail; but there is no use in our hurrying, because you know we should lose half the pleasure if papa and mama and uncle were not there.” Edward assented, and patience had her perfect work while the children made their feet, which seemed suddenly to have been furnished with the wings of Mercury, to keep time with the dignified movements of their parents.
When they turned into St. John's-street, and came in sight of the hotel, Edward saw the soldier standing by the step to the front entrance, and looking eagerly towards him, “there he is!” said he to Julia, and they both involuntarily changed their pace from a walk to a run, but before they reached the hotel, the soldier sprung into the door, and disappeared from their sight. He had caught the sound of his wife's voice, and their first joyful recognition had passed before the children entered the door.
Our youthful readers have, we trust, been entire strangers to those joys that are preceded by suffering, and which remind us of some clouds that send down their showers after the sun has broken through. They would have been as much surprised as were Edward and Julia, if they had seen, instead of smiles and ecstasies, the deathlike paleness of Mrs. Barton, her husband dashing the tear from his eyes that he might gaze upon his children; Dickey looking timidly at him, and the little girl burying her face in her mother's gown. Yet this was joy—joy that no words could express; the joy of kind and faithful hearts—joy with which a stranger cannot intermeddle; and Mrs. Sackville felt it to be such, for when she saw the family group, she drew her children into the parlour, and left their humble friends to themselves.
It was our intention to have described the soldier's gratitude—the contentment and thankfulness of his wife—the neat little cottage in which she was immediately placed by the officers of the regiment, who seemed delighted thus to manifest their regard for their corporal Barton. The emotion of this good family at parting with their benefactors—little Dickey's resolution, that when he grew to be a man, he would go and live with Mr. Edward—the hospitable honors rendered to the Sackville party by the officers of the regiment, who felt their beneficence to the British soldier's wife as a personal obligation—to which was to have been added, a particular description of some very beautiful curiosities presented to Edward and Julia by the governor's lady; but we fear our young readers will think we have already protracted a dull tale to an unconscionable length; and we will therefore take our leave of them, with simply expressing a wish, that if they should ever travel to Quebec, or indeed in any other direction, they will remember that after the delightful but evanescent pleasures of their jaunt had faded, and were almost effaced from the minds of Edward and Julia, they possessed a treasure that fadeth not away in the consciousness of having rendered an essential service to a fellow-creature. A consciousness that strews roses in the path of youth and age—not ‘the perfume and suppliance of a moment,’ but those amaranthine flowers that exhale incense to Heaven.