"My child," answered Hannah gravely, "however badly you or he might have felt, believe me, I felt the worse of the three, to be obliged to take the course I did."
"He will never come here again, never!" sobbed Nora, scarcely heeding the reply of her sister.
"I hope to Heaven he never may!" said Hannah, as she resumed her seat at her loom and drove the shuttle "fast and furious" from side to side of her cloth.
But he did come again. Despite the predictions of Nora and the prayers of Hannah and the inclemency of the weather.
The next day was a tempestuous one, with rain, snow, hail, and sleet all driven before a keen northeast wind, and the sisters, with a great roaring fire in the fireplace between them, were seated the one at her loom and the other at her spinning-wheel, when there came a rap at the door, and before anyone could possibly have had time to go to it, it was pushed open, and Herman Brudenell, covered with snow and sleet, rushed quickly in.
"For Heaven's sake, my dear Hannah, give me shelter from the storm! I couldn't wait for ceremony, you see! I had to rush right in after knocking! pardon me! Was ever such a climate as this of ours! What a day for the seventeenth of April! It ought to be bottled up and sent abroad as a curiosity!" he exclaimed, all in a breath, as he unceremoniously took off his cloak and shook it and threw it over a chair.
"Mr. Brudenell! You here again! What could have brought you out on such a day?" cried Hannah, starting up from her loom in extreme surprise.
"The spirit of restlessness, Hannah! It is so dull up there, and particularly on a dull day! How do you do, Nora? Blooming as a rose, eh?" he said, suddenly breaking off and going to shake hands with the blushing girl.
"Never mind Nora's roses, Mr. Brudenell; attend to me; I ask did you expect to find it any livelier here in this poor hut than in your own princely halls?" said Hannah, as she placed a chair before the fire for his accommodation.
"A great deal livelier, Hannah," he replied, with boyish frankness, as he took his seat and spread out his hands before the cheerful blaze. "No end to the livelier. Why, Hannah, it is always lively where there's nature, and always dull where there's not! Up yonder now there's too much art; high art indeed—but still art! From my mother and sisters all nature seems to have been educated, refined, and polished away. There we all sat this morning in the parlor, the young ladies punching holes in pieces of muslin, to sew them up again, and calling the work embroidery; and there was my mother, actually working a blue lamb on red grass, and calling her employment worsted work. There was no talk but of patterns, no fire but what was shut up close in a horrid radiator. Really, out of doors was more inviting than in. I thought I would just throw on my cloak and walk over here to see how you were getting along this cold weather, and what do I find here? A great open blazing woodfire—warm, fragrant, and cheerful as only such a fire can be! and a humming wheel and a dancing loom, two cheerful girls looking bright as two chirping birds in their nest! This is like a nest! and it is worth the walk to find it. You'll not turn me out for an hour or so, Hannah?"