“This place must be Arcady in summer.... How charming it is,” Ruth cried, delighted. “These gardens in flower, these trees in leaf——”
“It's not so bad,” said General Adgate, dryly. “Longfellow christened it the Rose of New England.”
“But———,” he added, “we call this the City of Oldbridge, a modern matter. You, Ruth, belong to the Court End of the town—you are of what we call the Old Town.”
Vastly amused at the distinction, a Yankee Faubourg Saint Germain, Ruth plied him with questions. In five minutes the agreeable news that she,—the last of the house of Adgate in America, Ruth Adgate verily the salt of the earth, tracing a clean English ancestry back to the crusades, to mistier periods beyond, here held her Yankee acres in grant first from an English Sovereign, and, without a drop of blood-shed from Indian Sachems,—gave to her humourous sense of proportion somewhat to smile over.
On they went,—under endless prospects of arching elm trees, whose branches threw oblique attenuated shadows among the rays of the descending sun. A few soft clouds at the horizon were tinted rosy and red. Then the very blue, blue sky, suffused with violet and rose, suddenly flared. Far and wide, from earth to zenith, far and wide the sky burst into a glorious scarlet conflagration.
The city lay behind, meadows stretched broadly at either side, and to the right a pretty line of hill and wood etched itself against the blushing clouds.
“The beginning of your acres, my dear,” said the old man, bowing his head. “There they lie, untouched, just as James the First ceded them to your forefathers, just as the Indian Sachems of the Mohegan Tribe confirming the gift, withdrew from 'em. The bit of wood there is known to this day as the Wigwam and the last Indian hut in this State disappeared when it was destroyed by fire a hundred years ago.”
They had passed a road that wandered into the woodland, they were rolling smartly by stone walls that shut in a goodly reach of close-cut lawn all seamed and scarred by grey jutments of rock, which rising, mounting, reached a hill through terraced gardens trimly laid and skirting the summit. The carriage took a sharp sweep upward into a gravelled drive, rolled on a few paces, stopped abruptly before a brown, rambling house,—Miss Adgate had reached the end of her journey.
“Welcome home,” said General Adgate, as he helped Ruth to alight. He bent down, kissed her, and led her up the steps into the house.