‘I hope you will yet walk into Willow Lawn,’ said Albinia.
‘Ah! thank you; I should like to see the old place. I dare say it may be transmogrified now, but I think I could find my way blindfold about the old garden. I say, Maria, do you remember that jolly tea-party on the lawn, when the frog made one too many?’
‘That I do—’ Maria could not utter more, and Albinia said she was afraid he would miss a great deal.
‘I reckoned on that when I came home. Changes everywhere; but after the one great change,’ he added, mournfully, ‘the others tell less. One has the less heart to care for an old tree or an old path.’
Albinia felt sure he could mean only one great change, but they were now at Mrs. Meadows’s door, and Maria wished them good night, giving a most grateful squeeze of the hand to Mrs. Kendal.
‘Where are you bound now?’ asked the captain.
‘Back to the vicarage, to take up my husband and the girls,’ said Albinia, ‘but good night. I am not afraid.’
The captain, however, chose to continue a squire of dames, and walked at her side, presently giving utterance to a sound of commiseration. ‘Ah! well, poor Maria, I never thought to see her so altered. Why, she had the prettiest bloom—I dare say you remember—but, I beg your pardon, somehow I thought you were her elder sister.’
‘Mr. Kendal’s first wife was,’ said Albinia, pitying the poor man; but Captain Pringle was not a man for awkwardness, and the short whistle with which he received her answer set her off laughing.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, recovering himself; ‘but you see I am all astray, like a man buried and dug up again, so no wonder I make strange blunders; and my poor uncle is grown so childish, that he does not know one person from another, and began by telling me Maria Meadows had married and gone out to India. I had not had a letter these seven years, so I thought it was high time to bring my boy home, and renew old times, though how I am ever to go back without him—’