In the midst of this conversation the door opened, and in walked Uncle Isaac.
“It was such a pleasant night,” said he, addressing the captain, “I told Hannah we’d take a run down to your house; and when I found you’d come over here, I thought I’d take your gunning float and follow suit.”
“Why didn’t you bring Hannah with you?” inquired Sally.
“Well, I wanted to; but she ain’t much of a water-fowl, and was afraid to come in a tittlish gunning float, and said she’d stay and visit Captain Rhines’s girls; but she sends her love to you, and says if she’d known I was coming, she’d sent you over a bag of apples.”
“How this does carry a body back!” said the widow; “it don’t seem but t’other day since I was living in a log house; and how much I’ve been through since then!”
They then went all over the house, and down cellar.
“Well, Isaac,” said Captain Rhines, “you’ve done yourself credit in building this house; I knew you would. ’Tisn’t much like the house I was born in; that wasn’t tighter than a wharf, except while it was stuffed with moss and clay; and some of that was always falling out. I’ve gone to bed many a night, and waked up in a snow drift, because the wind had blown the clay out, and the snow in; but I thought, when I was coming up from the shore, and saw it standing here in the moonlight, that it was as much like the one father built, after his boys got big enough to be of some help to him, as two peas in a pod: just as many windows, just as high, and with a bark roof; but it ain’t much like it other-ways; for the timber wan’t hewed—only the bark and knots taken off where it came together; but this is as tight as a churn. And then that fireplace; I wouldn’t believed it possible.”
“Well,” said Uncle Isaac, “I did the best I could; but I think Sam beat the whole of us. I should be glad to swap my fireplace and chimney for that, and give a yoke of oxen to boot.”
“Do you know, Isaac, there’s nothing carries me back to my boy days like that old chamber? It’s the very image of ours; it seems to me as if I was setting there now, on a rainy day, astraddle of a tub, shelling corn on the handle of mother’s frying-pan, with my thoughts running all over the world, longing to go to sea, and contriving how I should get father’s consent.”
A loud mewing was now heard in the corner of the room.