“‘Why with an “M”?’ said Alice,” as Enoch turned the page.
“‘Why not?’ said the March Hare.
“Delicious!” exclaimed Enoch aloud.
Two thousand miles back over that vast desert of wintry sea, the old house in Waverly Place stood stark and empty. Robbed even of its sign, “For Sale”—having been sold, and only waiting now for the crow-bars of a wrecking crew to complete its final ruin and give place to a new building.
A general exodus of its tenants and their belongings from cellar to roof had occurred immediately after Joe and Sue’s quiet wedding. Fortune and Mercury still smiled at the passer-by, but over a filthy vestibule, dust begrimed, a refuge for stray cats and dentists’ circulars.
Close to the locked area gate stood a battered ash-can, from which emerged a pair of cast-off shoes, and the skeleton of a broken umbrella; the whole place seemed dead and forgotten.
Even Moses and Matilda’s black cat now dozed contentedly before a new kitchen fire in Brooklyn, in a snug frame house Enoch had bestowed upon these faithful servitors, including an income sufficient for their declining years.
Since her sister Jane’s death, Miss Ann had been living in Virginia, in a fine old estate close to Richmond, an inheritance from a cousin. An old school friend, a Miss Patricia Belford, lived with her now—a maiden lady of rare humor, a gentle voice, and continuous cheerfulness. And here it would not be amiss to state that Emma Ford had persuaded Ebner at last to relinquish his strenuous business career in New York and return to her plain native town in North Carolina, where he became a really successful dealer in simple real estate and a popular superintendent of the Sunday-school and local Lyceum. The firm of Atwater & Grimsby had moved up-town, away from the redolent lemons and bananas, and was now newly installed in Twenty-third Street, just opposite the National Academy of Design, Atwater selecting his bachelor quarters as far up as Forty-third Street. As for the Seamaid, she was still cruising, her arrival in Havana being cited only the week before as follows:
Havana—Cuba—Dec. 18th arrived the auxiliary schooner Seamaid with her owner Mr. J. Lamont and guests—all well.
Enoch read on through Alice’s fascinating, playful wonderland, cradled by the lift and roll of the good ship.