A Sunny Morning.—The Chamber in the Old House.
The morning gathered each moment strength and beauty, for it was beautiful, although the trees were stripped of their summer verdure, and the earth no longer sent forth sweet flowers to—
Load with perfumes
The soft dreaming idle air
That steeped in sunshines.
Music, and all dear delight,
Hung, tranquilly ’twixt heaven and earth.
The sun, however, was bright, and the air, although the soft voluptuous warmth of summer, was full of health and life. The little waves on the river sparkled like silver broken into fragments and strewed upon the surface of the stream. For miles the clear cloudless sky reflected nothing but pure sunshine, beautiful although cold; it shone upon the palaces, the churches, and the bridges, and upon the meanest hovels pregnant with squalid poverty; it shone upon all alike. It found its way in floods of beauty, softened by rich colouring of glass and drapery, into the chambers of the rich and great, and it struggled through the dingy panes of the cottage windows, making, perchance, more happiness there than in the lordly mansion, which more frequently is the habitation of an aching heart.
There was one small room into which that clear morning sun shone in all its dearly-welcomed beauty, and there was one heart that was cheered by its presence, and smiled gladly in its radiant light; that room into which it shone was the sleeping chamber of the young boy, Harry, and that heart that welcomed its rays was his—a heart that ever beat in unison with all that was good—all that was beautiful.
The apartment was a small one adjoining a spacious room that was on the second floor of the house, and communicating with it by folding doors. It contained little else than a small couch and a few necessary articles of the toilette. A large mat lay at the door, on which reposed the dog, which was poor Harry’s only companion—his only friend.