The driver deposited his charge and their scanty baggage, on the front stoop of the old wooden house, and remounting his box, gave his horses' ears a professional touch with his long whiplash. Turning to give his ex-passengers a parting glance, he said:
"Wonder if that girl is the child's mother? Can't be, though," said he, still gazing at her slight figure; "she's nothing but a child herself. That boy is a beauty, any how, shouldn't mind owning him myself. I'm beat if any parson could call him totally depraved. That girl can't be his mother, though—she's too young."
Yes, young in years; but what is the dial's finger to those who live years in a lightning moment, or to whom an hour may be the tortoise creep of a century?
Yes, young in years; the face may be smooth and fair, while the heart is wrinkled; the eye may be bright, though the fire which feeds it is drying up the life-blood.
Yes, young in years; but old in sorrow—a child, and yet a woman!—a mother, but the world said, not a wife.
Rat—tat—the dilapidated brass knocker is as old as its mistress. The young girl draws a glove from her small hand, and applies her knuckles to the sun-blistered door. Old Mrs. Bond toddles to the threshhold. With what a stony look the stranger meets her curious gaze! With what a firm step she crosses the threshhold; as if, child-mother as she was, she had rights that must not be trampled on. But see, her eye moistens, and her lip quivers. Harshness she was prepared for—kindness she knows not how to bear.
"You must be very weary," said good Mrs. Bond to Rose, as she held out her matronly arms for little Charley. "Poor little fellow!" and she held a glass of cold spring water to his parched lips; "how pleasant he is; and the weather so warm too."
"Charley is a good boy," said the young mother, pushing back the moist curls from his temples, with a sad pride.
"It is a very pleasant country through which you passed to-day," said Mrs. Bond, "though mayhap you were too weary to look at it."