AWKWARD MEETINGS.
"Well, to be sure, who would have thought of such a treat! This is a pleasure indeed! Rose, Rose, whom do you think we have here?"
"How natural it all do look to be sure. There, Ambrose, there's the very rose tree I have so often told you of."
"Why, mother has described it all so well, I could have found my way blindfold."
The speaker was a tall, fair-faced young man, looking, in Charlotte Lee's eyes, like one of the young gentlemen from the university, but with something grave and deep about his face, and by him stood his little mother in the neatest of black silk dresses, with something sweet and childlike about her face still, though there were some middle-aged lines in it. She had once been the Amy Lee of Langley. She had married a schoolmaster, Mr. Cuthbert, and this was their only son. He had distinguished himself in all his examinations, and at the same time had shown so deep an interest in missions to the heathen, and had done so much to make the boys of the school care for them, that when there was a question of choosing a lad as a missionary student, whose expenses would be paid by subscriptions of the clergy in the diocese, at the great college of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, the vicar of his parish had three years ago proposed Ambrose Cuthbert as the fittest youth he knew. He had just finished his terms at the college, and was on his way home before going out to Rupertsland, having met his mother at the house of his father's brother in London. They had found out that an excursion train would enable them to run down to Langley and spend a few hours there; and Mrs. Cuthbert, who had always said her son must not leave England without having seen her old home, her brother and sisters, was delighted with the opportunity, and here they were, the brother and the three sisters all together, hardly knowing what they said in their eager joy.
"And my little Amy, where is she? You have not seen your namesake, Amy," said the father, who had come in bare armed and floury.
"She is not come back yet from poor little Teddy's," said Aunt Rose. "The child goes to teach, and see to, a poor little sick lad in a cottage every day, Amy. We like her to do such things," she added, pleased that her sister should see that their child was likewise something superior in goodness. "Ah! is it you, Jessie? This is Clemmy Fielding's daughter, Amy. Did you see our Amy as you came along, Jessie?"
"I will run back and call her," said Jessie, who had seen the top of Amy's sunshade over the hedge, and in good-natured sympathy wanted to spare all the shock of discovery.
"No, no," said Miss Rose, "thank you all the same, Jessie, but if you would not mind sitting down to the machine, I would walk out that way with my sister, just while my brother is finishing his batch of bread, and you are getting ready a bit of something to eat, Charlotte. I know, Amy, you would like just to look round the hill, and see where the squire's new cottages lie. Wouldn't you?"
Jessie saw there was no help for it. Mrs. Cuthbert was delighted to go and to show her son her old haunts; but first she spoke very kindly to Jessie, and inquired for her mother, saying she remembered her well; and on her side Jessie recollected that her mother always said she owed more to Mrs. Cuthbert's kindness when she was a little girl than to any one else.