“Like a cat on a cushion,” cried the too impulsive Hodmadod. Instantly, he felt his face shot clean through by the eye-balls of Mrs. Jericho. Whereupon, he stammered,—“When I say a cat on a cushion, I mean of course a lady—a lady in her own house, you know.”
“My dear Jericho,” said the wife to the dullard made of money, “you don’t seem to recollect where you are.”
“Where?” asked Jericho, holding his cheek on edge. “Where?”
“Why, at Marigolds. Don’t you remember those cottages, where the children stood, and where”—
Jericho growled, and no more. Possibly, he had the fullest recollection of the scene; and cared not to own it. Nevertheless, the place seemed blighted, changed. The two opposite schoolrooms where infant voices would answer voices, were empty, silent. There were knots of children playing at the doorways; here and there a straggler sprawling in the road: but the room of Schoolmaster White was tongueless; alike silent, and soon to be deserted, the school of Widow Blanket. Squire Carraways, who had fed these little rills of learning, was a fountain dried up, and the rills had sunk with the source. A few of the folks of Marigolds looked from doors and peeped out at casements as the carriage ceremoniously rolled along the road; and there was an air, a look of curiosity in the people; but nothing frank, nothing hearty in their manner. The party must have felt that they entered the village as conquerors, rather than as future householders and patrons.
“Eh! Why, here we are at Jogtrot Hall,” cried Jericho as the carriage rolled through the gates and wound up the sweep.
“Dear me, how dull everything looks!” said Mrs. Jericho, as she stept from the carriage. Dull indeed. The life of the Hall was gone—it seemed only the carcase of the house. All the furniture was removed; and vacancy stared through every window.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Hodmadod a little gravely. “Seems quite the ghost of bricks and mortar. Makes one low—very low. When I say low, I mean quite a woman. No; I don’t mean that—I”—
“The emotion, my dear Sir Arthur,” said Candituft, “does honour to your nature. There’s hardly a piece of the house that doesn’t seem to mourn the absence of the dear people who gave it warmth and life. I’m sure the family seem to come all about me; but—there is such a chill, such a loneliness—they come like ghosts.”
“I didn’t think,” said Agatha, and two tears peeped into her eyes, “I didn’t think there could be such a—a sort of feeling in an empty house. I’m sure there’s something quite—quite religious about it.”