The pot seethed to the kettle, "It is dinner-time, and the little boys are crying for food, and still there is no one to lift me on the crane and start the fire beneath me! What will they think of me, they gathered around so many years and watched me boil, and poked their little fingers in to taste the stewing meat? I want to go! I want to go!"
The kettle answered to the pot: "I never sung since the constable forced me from grandmother's hand, and robbed her of the cup of tea."
The old quilt of many squares fluttered in the draught: "Take me to the young wife who sewed me together and showed me so proudly, for I fear she is a-cold since her young husband died!"
These household sounds the thrilled young lovers, standing so poor and on the brink of what they knew not, seemed to hear in awe, and drew closer to each other, like young Eve and Adam in the great wreck of Paradise and at the voice of God.
Hand in hand they stepped forth into the bright light of day, and walked along the sandy street beneath the tall locust, maple, and ailanthus trees that grew in line along the front yards of the Cannon brothers. Four large houses stood sidewise, end to end, here: first, Cannon's business house; next, Isaac Cannon's comfortable home, where he dwelt, a married man; and, third, the elegant frame mansion, with tall, airy chimneys, of Jacob Cannon the bachelor, whose house, built for a bride, had never yet been warmed by a fire; finally, the old, bow-roofed, low dwelling of the mother of the Cannons, opposite which was the ferry wharf, and Van Dorn talking to the negro ferryman.
"Levin," said pretty Hulda, not sad, but very grave, "this noble house is like that noble-looking Mr. Cannon, hollow and cold. He lives with his brother Isaac, and keeps his own dwelling empty and locked up, because he loved money too much to find a wife."
"Let us love each other, Huldy," Levin said; "it is all we've got."
"It is all there is to get, my love," Hulda answered. "Yes, I do love you, Levin. I will try to save you, if I can, because I love you, though suffering may come to me."
"No," cried Levin, "I cannot leave you, dear. If I could now cross in the ferry-boat, I wouldn't do it; I must go back with you."
As Captain Van Dorn came up from the wharf, blushing like a school-boy, and tapping his white teeth together under the long flax of his mustache, his attention was arrested by a proclamation pasted on a post: