'Why not?' I enquired.
'Never'd hev hed a chance,' Uncle Eb added.
We were two weeks at home with mother and father and Uncle Eb. It was a delightful season of rest in which Hope and I went over the sloping roads of Faraway and walked in the fields and saw the harvesting. She had appointed Christmas Day for our wedding and I was not to go again to the war, for now my first duty was to my own people. If God prospered me they were all to come to live with us in town and, though slow to promise, I could see it gave them comfort to know we were to be for them ever a staff and refuge.
And the evening before we came back to town Jed Feary was with us and Uncle Eb played his flute and sang the songs that had been the delight of our childhood.
The old poet read these lines written in memory of old times in Faraway and of Hope's girlhood.
'The red was in the clover an' the blue was in the sky:
There was music in the meadow, there was dancing in the rye;
An' I heard a voice a calling to the flocks o' Faraway
An' its echo in the wooded hills—Go'day! Go'day! Go'day!
O fair was she—my lady love—an' lithe as the willow tree,
An' aye my heart remembers well her parting words t' me.
An' I was sad as a beggar-man but she was blithe an' gay
An' I think o' her as I call the flocks Go'day! Go'day! Go'day!
Her cheeks they stole the dover's red, her lips the odoured air,
An' the glow o' the morning sunlight she took away in her hair;
Her voice had the meadow music, her form an' her laughing eye
Have taken the blue o' the heavens an' the grace o' the bending rye.
My love has robbed the summer day—the field, the sky, the dell,
She has taken their treasures with her, she has taken my heart as well;
An' if ever, in the further fields, her feet should go astray
May she hear the good God calling her Go'day! Go'day! Go'day!
Chapter 41
I got a warm welcome on Monkey Hill. John Trumbull came to dine with us at the chalet the evening of my arrival. McGlingan had become editor-in-chief of a new daily newspaper. Since the war began Mr Force had found ample and remunerative occupation writing the 'Obituaries of Distinguished Persons. He sat between Trumbull and McGlingan at table and told again of the time he had introduced the late Daniel Webster to the people of his native town.
Reciting a passage of the immortal Senator he tipped his beer into the lap of McClingan. He ceased talking and sought pardon.