1. Mr. Green, senior., 2. Miss Virginia Verdant., 3. Mrs. Green., 4. Mr. Verdant Green., 5. Miss Helen Green., 6. Miss Fanny Green., 7. Miss Mary Green.
CHAPTER III.
MR. VERDANT GREEN LEAVES THE HOME OF HIS ANCESTORS.
THE time till Easter passed very quickly, for much had to be done in it. Verdant read up most desperately for his matriculation, associating that initiatory examination with the most dismal visions of plucking, and other college tortures.
His mother was laying in for him a new stock of linen, sufficient in quantity to provide him for years of emigration; while his father was busying himself about the plate that it was requisite to take, buying it bran-new, and of the most solid silver, and having it splendidly engraved with the family crest, and the motto "Semper virens."
Infatuated Mr. Green! If you could have foreseen that those spoons and forks would have soon passed, - by a mysterious system of loss which undergraduate powers can never fathom, - into the property of Mr. Robert Filcher, the excellent, though occasionally erratic, scout of your beloved son, and from thence have melted, not "into thin air," but into a residuum whose mass might be expressed by the equivalent of coins of a thin and golden description, - if you could but have foreseen this, then, infatuated but affectionate parent, you would have been content to have let your son and heir represent the ancestral wealth by mere electro-plate, albata, or any sham that would equally well have served his purpose!
As for Miss Virginia Verdant, and the other woman portion of the Green community, they fully occupied their time until the day of separation came, by elaborating articles of feminine workmanship, as souvenirs, by which dear Verdant might, in the land of the strangers, recall visions of home. These were presented to him with all due state on the morning of the day previous to that on which he was to leave the home of his ancestors.
All the articles were useful as well as ornamental. There was a purse from Helen, which, besides being a triumph of art in the way of bead decoration, was also, it must be allowed, a very useful present, unless one happened to carry one's riches in a porte-monnaie. There was a pair of braces from Mary, worked with an ecclesiastical pattern of a severe character - very appropriate for academical wear, and extremely effective for all occasions when the coat had to be taken off in public. And there was a watch-pocket from Fanny, to hang over Verdant's night-capped head, and serve as a depository for the golden mechanical turnip that had been handed down in the family, as a watch, for the last three generations. And there was a pair of woollen comforters knit by Miss Virginia's own fair hands; and there were other woollen articles of domestic use, which were contributed by Mrs. Green for her son's personal comfort. To these, Miss Virginia thoughtfully added an infallible recipe for the toothache, - an infliction to which she was a martyr, and for the general relief of which in others, she constituted herself a species of toothache missionary; for, as she said, "You might, my dear Verdant, be seized with that painful disease, and not have me by your side to cure it": which it was very probable he would not, if college rules were strictly carried out at Brazenface.