A FEW months later, when the spring was just opening, Beatrice and Roland stood on the wide porch of the old house in New Windsor, eagerly watching the approach of a carriage which was bringing to the Lindens the rest of their family. The girl’s feet could not keep from dancing, and the lad’s spirits found vent in a whistle so merry and so spontaneous that old Mr. Dolloway, hearing it, muttered grimly: “I hope he can keep on a feeling that way after he’s tried farming a spell. I don’t see any great fun in hard work myself, an’ that’s what he’ll get, an’ plenty of it.”
“Oh! I hope Motherkin will not be disappointed! Think of her trusting everything to her children, and saying that what we like will certainly suit her! Was there ever such a love of a mother in this world?”
“No, Bonny, I don’t believe there ever was. I can imagine no human being more perfect than our mother.”
“I mean she shall have a splendid rest now. This air is perfectly delicious! It fairly tingles through my veins, it is so pure and brilliant!”
The brother fell to whistling again.
“See! The buds are really swelling on my lindens! I wonder what their secret is.”
“I thought you professed to having found out?”
“Not quite. I did think, from the stories I have read about Revolutionary times here, that perhaps Mr. Brook believed there was a buried treasure underneath those trees somewhere. But last night I asked him, and he laughed so gayly that I knew I was on the wrong track. Miss Joanna laughed, too, and asked me if I thought all the poor old soldiers had money to bury, because she had certainly heard of enough being searched for to supply the whole army with wealth, and yet history told us that they suffered great privations. There have been some ‘pots of gold’ resurrected right here in this New Windsor town, but they did not hold enough to enrich anybody, and their contents are preserved more as curiosities than used to supply common wants.”
“So you give up that idea entirely?”
“Entirely. There they come. Oh, Mother! Here at last!”