“I declare!” exclaimed Elsie, with her cheerful, ringing tones, “if here are not two of my old, old playmates!” And seizing a hand of each, she shook them heartily; then joining those two hands in hers, she said, “Let me be the mediator. Be friends, as you long to be!” and slipped away, leaving them together.
“Shall we be friends? Shall we be more to each other, Ambrosia?” said Ulysses, pressing her hand.
“Yes; if you can forgive the infidelity caused by ambition, and expiated by whole years of suffering!”
“I have waited for you ten years, Ambrosia. I should think that an answer. Come! let’s go to the bay window and talk over old times!”
“Not now; the company are going in to breakfast,” replied Ambrosia, taking his arm; and they followed in the wake of the foremost. Mrs. Garnet approached the clergyman, who still lingered as if lost in abstraction.
“Mr. Sinclair,” she said, “it gives me great happiness to see you back here and settled in our parish. I am much pleased, also, to welcome you to our house. The company have gone in to breakfast; will you come?” Mr. Sinclair bowed in grave silence, gave the lady his arm, and they followed the others.
Breakfast was over. The traveling carriage of Mount Calm was packed and at the door to convey the newly-married couple to the stage office at Huttontown, whence they were to start for the West. The family party, consisting of Mrs. Garnet, Dr. and Mrs. Hardcastle, and the bride and groom, were grouped for a last leave-taking in the passage, when Miss Joe suddenly appeared among them, in her poke bonnet and brown shawl, with a bandbox in one hand and a basket in the other, and followed by a negro man, bending under the weight of a great trunk. When the little party stared with surprise, she exclaimed:
“Well, now, you needn’t look so queer, all of you, cause I couldn’t help of it! I’ve been a-struggling and a-struggling with my feelings, and I couldn’t help of it! I’m gwine long o’ Hugh and Nettie. They’re like my own children, ’cause I took care of them when they were little! And I’m gwine long o’ them. Besides, long as they’re poor, they’ll want somebody to help them work. It aint much I can do now, seeing I’m nigh on to seventy years old. But, leastways, I can mend their clothes, and darn the children’s stockings, and mind the baby, and so on.”
There was no time for much argument now; but to all that Mrs. Garnet and the Hardcastles could say to prevail on her to remain at Mount Calm the old lady turned a deaf ear. She was set to go with Hugh and Nettie, because they were like her own children, and because they were poor.
“But they are not poor,” said Mrs. Garnet; “and, oh! that reminds me—I have the deed of gift yet,” continued the lady, producing the deed from her pocket, and placing it in the hands of Dr. Hutton.