And the house? Was the house still as she had left it on that Christmas Eve? “A simple gentleman's home, my child—not so imposing as Uplands, with its pillars reaching to the roof, but older, oh, much older, and built of brick that was brought all the way from England, and over the fireplace in the panelled parlour you will find the Lightfoot arms.
“It was in that parlour, dear, that grandmamma danced a minuet with General Lafayette; it looks out, you know, upon a white thorn planted by the General himself, and one of the windows has not been opened for fifty years, because the spray of English ivy your Great-aunt Emmeline set out with her own hands has grown across the sash. Now the window is quite dark with leaves, though you can still read the words Aunt Emmeline cut with her diamond ring in one of the tiny panes, when young Harry Fitzhugh came in upon her just as she had written a refusal to an English earl. She was sitting in the window seat with the letter in her hand, and, when your Great-uncle Harry—she afterwards married him, you know—fell on his knees and cried out that others might offer her fame and wealth, but that he had nothing except love, she turned, with a smile, and wrote upon the pane 'Love is best.' You can still see the words, very faint against the ivy that she planted on her wedding day—”
Oh, yes, he knew it all—Great-aunt Emmeline was but the abiding presence of the place. He knew the lawn with its grove of elms that overtopped the peaked roof, the hall, with its shining floor and detached staircase that crooked itself in the centre where the tall clock stood, and, best of all, the white panels of the parlour where hung the portrait of that same fascinating great-aunt, painted, in amber brocade, as Venus with the apple in her hand.
And his grandmother, herself, in her stiff black silk, with a square of lace turned back from her thin throat and a fluted cap above her corkscrew curls—her daguerreotype, taken in all her pride and her precision, was tied up in the bundle swinging on his arm.
He passed Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and turned into the road with the chestnuts. A mile farther he came suddenly upon the house, standing amid the grove of elms, dwarfed by the giant trees that arched above it. A dog's bark sounded snappily from a kennel, but he paid no heed. He went up the broad white walk, climbed the steps to the square front porch, and lifted the great brass knocker. When he let it fall, the sound echoed through the shuttered house.
The Major, who was sitting in his library with a volume of Mr. Addison open before him and a decanter of Burgundy at his right hand, heard the knock, and started to his feet. “Something's gone wrong at Uplands,” he said aloud; “there's an illness—or the brandy is out.” He closed the book, pushed aside the bedroom candle which he had been about to light, and went out into the hall. As he unbarred the door and flung it open, he began at once:—
“I hope there's no ill news,” he exclaimed.
The boy came into the hall, where he stood blinking from the glare of the lamplight. His head whirled, and he reached out to steady himself against the door. Then he carefully laid down his bundle and looked up with his mother's smile.
“You're my grandfather, and I'm very hungry,” he said.
The Major caught the child's shoulders and drew him, almost roughly, under the light. As he towered there above him, he gulped down something in his throat, and his wide nostrils twitched.