“Oh, Aunt Lorena, did you come here a bride? Did Uncle David bring you here? Had you ever seen it before?”
“I had known it ever since I was a child, but notwithstanding that, the day I entered it and knew it for my own to live in was one of the happiest of my life.”
“All on account of the house, I suppose,” growled Uncle David from the front seat of the car. Aunt Lorena laughed like a bird and said nothing.
“Oh, the years must have rolled sweetly by, Lorena,” said I under my breath.
She smiled at me beautifully, and then we got out of the car, and there were people running from out of the house and from around the house to help us—kind, affectionate, capable black people, happy and well placed.
They all looked at me, open-eyed, like children, and they bowed and smiled, but all the time I could see they were wondering. Then Uncle David took me by the hand and led me up the steps and turned with me and said:
“This is Miss Azalea Knox, the daughter of my brother John. She has come here to be the daughter of the house and your young mistress.”
In the old days—or at least in story books—my “faithful retainers” would have cheered. These did not cheer, but there were murmurs of interest and pleasure, and then they began coming up to wish me happiness with the sweetest manners imaginable. So I shook hands with them all, and liked them, and felt I would enjoy doing things for them and that I could ask them to do things for me. All the while, inside, deep down, there was a curious chuckling going on in me. I couldn’t help having that laugh with myself.
“So the poor homespun princess really has come to her ancestral halls,” I kept thinking. I wondered that it didn’t strike Uncle David and Aunt Lorena and that they didn’t laugh. But no, Carin, they were quite serious and grand, and I soon saw how well their stately ways went with that beautiful place.
I mustn’t take time to describe all the place to you, must I? But I cannot pass on without telling you my first impression of the great hall by which we entered. There was a high paneling in carved wood, and a sweeping staircase, with carved panels, and a fireplace, all beautifully carved too. The dark, shining floor was covered with strips of gray carpeting, and at the doors and the great window of leaded glass on the landing were silvery curtains with bands of white and black. Then there was the clock of teakwood, and a lovely statue of a Diana in pinky-white marble, so delicate the light came through her arm.