"Oh, thank you."
He held the clover carefully, thinking of the fairy-tale.
Now they were passing the great, perfectly straight tulip-tree, that went up and up like a ship's mast before the far-away boughs soared out into the dim depths of evening air. A light breeze had risen. A bird high up in the proudly waving branches twittered faintly. Except for that, a hush was over the world; but in the child's heart there was a mysterious sense of tumult, one of those periodic waves of excitement that rush over sensitive young creatures, along with the vague consciousness of the wonder of this strange thing, life, that is opening out before their thrilling senses.
Ethan stood looking up till a kind of delicious dizziness seized him, and he leaned his head lightly against his grandmother's arm. She smiled down into his eyes, saying never a word, but when they went in-doors there was understanding between them.
A large octagon-shaped lamp of debased Moorish design hung in the hall, and the light came through the eight panes of parti-colored glass with a cheerful, even festive, effect. The parlor on the left of the front-door was dark. The great room opposite, which ran the whole length of that end of the house, and had two windows at either extremity, was Mrs. Gano's sitting-room in summer, and, by an arrangement of screens, her bedroom as well in winter. There was a single lamp burning on one of the pair of heavy old card-tables on either side the fireplace. Opposite, along the wall separating the room from the hall, stretched a great old-fashioned buffet, consisting of two mahogany cupboards, with drawers above, and pillared porches below, and an arched and carved back bridging them, and forming below a well-polished surface, whereon stood empty cut-glass decanters and tall celery vases. The long drawer of this middle part of the buffet, as well as those on the top of the cupboards on either side, was opened by a big brass ring held in a lion's mouth. The fireplace opposite was screened by an extensive landscape in oils, framed in ornate and tarnished gilt. All the space on each side of the mantel-piece right and left as far as the windows was filled with bookcases and mineralogical cabinets built into the wall. Between the front windows was an old-fashioned escritoire, reaching high up, nearly to the ceiling, always locked, and equally always wearing the air of a keeper of things secret and important. An engraving, grown brown with age, hung in a faded gilt frame above the fireplace. It was the great scene from "Measure for Measure," and above the buffet hung another from "The Tempest," with "What is't? A spirit?" written underneath. On the mantel-piece were two tall blue china vases, that had been old, Mrs. Gano said, when she was young. She sat down by the lamp in a chair that no one ever saw the like of before. Very big and very crimson, it was rounded out in semicircular fashion on each side at the top, forming well-padded cushions against which to rest the head; but no one ever saw Mrs. Gano making such a use of them. The chair had arms and a foot-rest, and was mounted upon short, strong rockers—altogether a structure of unique device, that no one up to that time, except its proper owner, ever dared dream of inhabiting for a moment.
Mrs. Gano handed Ethan a book.
"I suppose you know that by heart?"
"Moral Tales? No; I've only heard about 'em."
"Is it possible? What do you read, then?"
"You see, I have to study a good deal."