“Old Brown Farm.”
CHAPTER IX.
“A sunshiny world, full of laughter and pleasure.”
“Oh, Auntie dear, isn’t this most like Heaven,” breaks out little Bear, lying by his Auntie’s side, on soft cushions, under the great Elm’s leafy canopy, drinking in the soft country air, laden with the sweet perfume it steals from the meadows and woodlands it journeys through, whilst his blue eyes glisten with delight at the prospect before him.
The softest of blue skies was varied by piled-up masses of fleecy clouds; fields of young corn waved their shining green leaves in answer to the balmy zephyr’s greeting, whilst in the distant meadows hay-makers tossed about their light load to the music of the mower’s wheels.
At the right stood the quaint old farm-house, with its festoons of trumpet and honeysuckle vine, and its gay setting of lady-slippers and marigold, interspersed with the housewifely marjoram and balsam.
Papa, standing on the old porch, waiting for an answer to the huge lion’s paw, which serves as knocker, sees with pleasure the same old grindstone he used so proudly to turn in his childhood,—the long tell-tale array of shining milk-pans hung upon the picket-fence, looking quite the same, but Juba, the sportive companion of those boyish days, lies basking in the sun, snapping maliciously at the teasing flies and eying the visitor with suspicious glance.
“Juba, old fellow, have you forgotten me? Can’t you give an old playfellow a better welcome than this?”