CHAPTER IV. HER STORY.
T reherne Court.
Where, after another month's pause, I resume my journal.
Papa and I have been here a week. At the last moment Penelope declined going, saying that some one ought to keep house at Rock-mount. I wished to do so; but she would not allow me.
This is a fine place, and papa enjoys it extremely. The enforced change, the complete upsetting of his former solitary ways, first by Lisabel's marriage, and then by his own illness, seem to have made him quite young again. Before we left, Doctor Black pronounced him entirely recovered; that he might reasonably look forward to a healthy, green old age. God grant it! For, altered as he is, in so many ways, by some imperceptible influence; having wider interests—is it wrong to write affections?—than he has had for the last twenty years, he will enjoy life far more than ever before. Ah me; how can any body really enjoy life without having others to make happy, and to draw happiness from?
Doctor Black wished, as a matter of professional etiquette, that papa should once again consult Dr. Urquhart, about his taking this long northern journey; but on sending to the camp we found he was “absent on leave,” and had been for some time. Papa was disappointed and a little annoyed. It was strange, rather; but might have been sudden and important business, connected with the plans of which he told me, and which I did not quite feel justified in communicating further, till he informs papa himself.
I had a week of that restless laziness, which I suppose most people unaccustomed to leave home experience for the first few days of a visit: not unpleasant laziness, neither, for there was the Christmas week to anticipate and plan for, and every nook in this beautiful place to investigate, as its own possessors scarcely care to do; but which I, and other visitors, shall so intensely enjoy. I am trying to feel settled now.
In this octagon room, which Lisabel—such a thoughtful, kindly hostess, as Lisa makes! has specially appropriated mine, I take up my rest. It is the wee-est room attainable in this great, wide, wandering mansion; where I still at times feel as strange as a bird in a crystal palace; such birds as in the Aladdin Palace of 1851. we used to see flying about the tops of these gigantic, motionless trees, caught under the glass, and cheated by those green, windless, unstirred leaves into planning a natural wild-wood nest. Poor little things! To have once dreamed of a nest, and then never to be able to find or build it, must be a sore thing.