“Not at all. He was an honest fellow—had your interest at heart and looked after it. How did he know but I might have walked off with the piano?” answered the visitor, patting his host on the shoulder to soothe down his anger, and adding, “I know I, for one, looked like a suspicious party, in my weather-beaten sea-suit. And just see what an old-fashioned bonnet my wife wears; and as for Nanny, I have a painful impression that she is overdressed,” he sighed, glancing from the rich, light-blue taffeta gown, and white silk mantle and bonnet of Miss Seymour’s costume to the plain grays that formed the street dress of the other ladies.
“Miss Nanny is charming in any style,” said the General, gallantly, bowing to the mortified girl.
“However,” continued Colonel Seymour, “I was anxious to see you all, so I waited. I suppose if we had been fashionable folks we should have left our cards and gone away; but being plain people, we preferred to wait for your return. So here we are, and here you are! We expected to see you, but you didn’t expect to see us, did you now?”
“No; but we are not the less overjoyed on that account. And of course you must stay and dine with us.”
“Of course. I told the waiter so,” laughed the colonel.
“Now, dear Mrs. Seymour and darling Nanny, you must both come up with Drusilla and myself to our rooms to take off your bonnets,” said Anna, rising and conducting her visitors from the room.
At a sign from the General, Dick went down-stairs to order some necessary additions to their dinner, in honor of their guests.
“Now, old friend, tell me what put it into your head to cross the ocean and give me this great pleasure?” inquired General Lyon, when he found himself alone with his neighbor.
“Example,” answered Colonel Seymour;—“nothing but example. You and your family left the neighborhood to go to Europe. And I and mine were very lonesome, I can tell you, after you were all gone. So one day I up and said to my wife:
“‘Polly, if we are ever to see the Old World, we had as well see it now as at another time. We are not growing younger, Polly. Indeed I sometimes fancy we are growing older.’