“Good! good! Here it is, Elsie! Come, look! Here is Dr. Hutton’s warrant to kill and cure, secundum artem. Here is the diploma. Here is the prize for which he has toiled so hard—the good of his race.”
“No; not the good, but the great starting place. Is it not so, Hugh?” said Elsie, coming forward.
“Yes, true, the starting point. She is worthier than I. The starting point, my boy. And now for a brilliant career. Aim high, Hugh. He who aims at the sun may not bring it down, but his arrow will fly highest. You must be more successful than I have been, Hugh. I am a useful—if you please—an extensively useful member of my profession, and of society. You must be a distinguished honor to the faculty and the world. Oh! I have a grand ambition for you, Hugh, my son!”
“My dear friend! my best friend! all that I am and have I owe to you, to your patient, disinterested teaching of many years. Oh, yes! and all that I may become or may possess I shall still owe to you! Ah, Dr. Hardcastle! I speak of a debt! I shall never be able to pay the debt I owe to you.”
“Why, Hugh!” replied Dr. Hardcastle, throwing his arm affectionately over the shoulder of his young friend, and speaking in a voice as harmonious and gentle as a woman’s. “Why, Hugh! never let me hear another word of owing anything but brotherly love to me. You who have been my second self in all my labors and professional cares; a son to me, except that you have given me no anxiety, but much ease. My brother, companion, confidant! Why, whatever could I have done without you, Hugh? What could any of us have done without you? Mrs. Garnet! how could you have got along without your son, Hugh? Elsie! how could you have managed to conduct your domestic and business affairs without Hugh? Children! little ones, I say! what would you take for ‘big brother’?”
The last-named little shareholders in the Hugh Hutton property swarmed around him, some with gentle, some with vociferous demonstrations of affection. And their mother laid her hands affectionately on his shoulders, and, looking up in his face, said:
“Dear Hugh! No! no one could possibly have supplied your place to us, since we have known you. You have been, indeed, like a younger brother, or an elder son of the family, only that, as the doctor says, instead of giving us trouble, you have relieved us of it. Oh, Hugh! our dear boy! only be half as eminent as we hope you will be, and we shall be so proud and happy in your success!”
“Come, come, Elsie, a truce to sentiment! Supper waits, and a man who has staged night and day for a week, and walked three miles to-night, must have a good appetite for his supper, and a strong disposition to his bed. Come; give the babe to his sister, there, and draw your chair up. The children have been suffered to sit up in honor of your arrival, Hugh. They are usually in bed at this hour. Come,” said Dr. Hardcastle, seating himself at the table, when all the others were seated, “let’s see! What have we here to tempt a traveler’s appetite? Mocha coffee—some of that which you sent us by the wagon, Hugh—and cream and butter, such as Elsie only can make. Here are some buckwheat cakes; just try one. Our buckwheat has surpassed itself this year. There, I don’t think you ever met with buckwheat cake like that in the city. Indeed, I don’t think people east of the mountains know what good buckwheat really is. Take honey with your cake. There’s honey for you. The comb clear and clean like amber and frost. Our bees have distinguished themselves this season. There are venison steaks before you. Use the currant jelly with them, Hugh, it is better than the grape. That is the finest venison that I have seen this winter. Ah, Hugh, you should have been with me when I brought that stag down—shot him on the Bushy Ridge. Great fellow!—eight antlers—five inches of fat in the brisket!—weighing—how much did he weigh, Elsie? No matter. You are laughing, Hugh. What at, sir, pray?”
“At you, and myself, and stag-hunting, and deerstalking, and story-tellings. The truth is, I never hear of stags and antlers, but I think of a fine, bragging tale I was cut short in while telling to my fellow-students at a little farewell supper given by them to me when I was coming away. I was trying to persuade some of them to come out here, and boasting of the country. I was launched into the midst of a grandiloquent eulogium. ‘Glorious country, sir!’ said I, ‘glorious country! sublime mountains, piercing the clouds! mag-nif-i-cent forests stretching five hundred miles westward! splendid trees, sir, standing but two feet apart, their trunks measuring three yards in circumference! their luxurious branches inextricably intertwined! and game, sir! superb deer, with antlers six feet apart, bounding through those forests——’ ‘Where the trees grow but two feet apart, and their branches are inextricably entwined, how the very deuce do they manage to get through them, Hutton?’ asked my friend, bringing my magniloquence to a sudden stand. I never was so disconcerted in my life. I knew I had been telling the truth, yet had made it sound like a fiction. At last I answered, ‘By Dian, sir, that is their business, not mine, nor yours!’”
“Ha, ha, ha! Yes, pretty good! Yet, Hugh, you are not romancing. There are parts of the forest where the great trees grow in such thickets as you have described; but they are as impassable to the deer as to us, of course; and then there is superb game in the forest, which may never approach within miles of such thickets. Take another cup of coffee?”