“And you, Resolved Tubbs? I know your voice!” The visitor’s hand was extended and clasped, though cautiously, by the trembling one of the old servitor. “My eyes—”
“I see, I see, sir. This way—you know—Madam is in the library. I don’t think she expected you so soon.”
“Maybe not. Though my secretary wrote.”
“This way, sir.” Mr. Tubbs had become himself again: a wooden-visaged old man who liked to express no opinion whatever, till it had been formed for him by his mistress of many years. He had not been able yet to judge whether that mistress would rejoice at this home-coming of her only son, or not; and he waited his cue before knowing his own sentiments.
“Ah! if it is as it used to be, I can find my own way, Resolved. The table by the wall—I recall its red wool cover with the black stamp exactly in the middle; the two oaken chairs here; and here—the hat-rack! At home, indeed! Even the very aroma of lavender and southernwood from those upper chambers is unchanged!”
Then the blue goggles could not hide the gladness which leaped to the son’s face as he turned the brass knob of the library door, and cried out, “Mother! are you here?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, which Daniel Calthorp’s dim eyes could not see; then the rustle of silken skirts, and the stately old lady of the mansion had risen from her chair and crossed the room, to take her boy’s hands in her own, and to imprint upon his bearded cheek a kiss of greeting. “So soon, Daniel? I had not looked for you until next week.”
“Yes; I had a message sent. You see, I was able to get through a bit earlier, and I could endure no unnecessary delay. Here, darling, this is Grandmother.”
In all her life Steenie had never looked upon the face of any woman who bore a kinship to herself, and the dreams of her romantic little heart had clustered about this unknown relative with an intensity such as only childhood knows. So she scarcely waited to have her elders’ hands unclasped before she sprang forward between her father and his mother, and precipitated herself upon that lady’s neck. “Oh, I thought you would be pretty! but you’re prettier than anything I ever saw!”
Madam Calthorp staggered a little,—perhaps from the violence of this attack upon her person, perhaps from surprise at the words; then she quietly loosened the child’s clinging arms and released herself. “You are an impulsive little girl, Steenie! Let me see, how old are you?”