“Sure. Now, ma’am, I’ve been cipherin’ how’s best to get up-hill to that there cottage where we live now. I reckon the ‘easiest way is the purtiest way’ an’ that’ll be for me to lead this cantankerous old broncho, that ‘hasn’t sense enough to go in when it rains,’ and you and ‘Little Captain’ ride up in a ‘bus.’ There’s two or three of them always standin’ round, waiting for customers. Baggage, ma’am? Where’s that at?”
“Here is my check. It’s but a small satchel. I couldn’t wait for more—even if I was going to stay all summer.”
“All summer, mother dearest? Oh! how splendid! Yet—that won’t be but a mite of a time, anyway, ’cause it’s summer now. June; just think! I’ve been here two whole months already.”
The mother might have added: “They seem like as many years to me;” but it wasn’t her way to dwell upon unpleasant feelings and she had her arms about her child, at last.
What a ride that was! How the happy tongues flew, how questions and answers were tossed to and fro, how plans were laid, events discussed, and the returned easterner felt that she had come into her own again. California she loved. In California she would live and die; but beside this broad old river she had been born and its rugged, verdure-covered Highlands were most beautiful in her sight.
And what a welcome followed, when old Margaret and Gabriella met! How keen the glances with which each searched the other’s face and read thereon the lessons life and the years had taught. Through Mrs. Trent’s heart shot a swift pain, beholding in Madam the signs of a great grief. Despite the valiant front she would still present to her changed fortunes, the loss of her home had aged her as the flight of time could not. In repose, when no necessity for assumed brightness roused her, she looked to the full what she really was—an old, old woman; world-weary, life-weary, though a “Waldron” still!
Also, though she did not acknowledge it, she was wofully disappointed in Gabriella, whom she remembered as a gay, bright “society girl,” but who was so sadly changed.
To Granny Briggs, who had begun to usurp the confidences once enjoyed by Barnes, she regretted:
“My cousin Gabriella hasn’t an atom of style. She’s become a regular dowd, living out there in that wilderness. She used to be the most admired girl in our set and was Madam Mearsom’s star pupil. She graduated with highest honors—My! But she was a beauty, that day! in her white gown, of the finest, sheerest French organdie, with billows of filmy lace—I took good care that my ward’s gown should be the handsomest of all her class’s. Poor Gabriella! Such a pity, to throw herself away on a penniless man when she might easily have married a millionaire and a gentleman of the first family.”
“Yes’m. But seems if she was real peart and purty lookin’ yet. I don’t know much about that ‘style,’ I hear tell of, but she’s got a kind of voice that makes you feel warm in your insides when she talks with you; and that old Ephraim seems to worship the very ground she treads on. I don’t know, I ain’t no judge for the aristocratics, but seems if bein’ loved that way makes up for not havin’ that ‘style.’ What think she’d like best for dinner, to-day? I’d admire to cook her something as nice as that old ‘Aunt Sally’ of theirs, or that heathen Wun Lung’s. Ephraim Marsh, he’s makin’ great reckonin’ on that garden of his’n; but a garden planted in June ain’t goin’ to be no great shakes, ’cordin’ to New Hampshire notions. What say, we best have? Then I’ll go buy the stuff of the nighest huckster.”