“Well, you didn’t stay very long, good little woman. I was keeping up my spirits with a song; and, in spite of my music, beginning to miss you.”
And, meeting her as she entered the room, he led her, with his arm about her waist, to a chair, in which, with a kiss, he placed her.
“All this seems to me like a dream. I can’t believe it; but, if it be, woe to the fool who wakes me! No, darling, it’s no dream, is it?” he said, smiling, and kissed her again. “The happiest day of my life,” he said, and through his eyes smiled upon her a flood of the tenderest love.
A little more such talk, and then they sat down to that memorable cup of tea—“the first in our own house.”
The delightful independence—the excitement, the importance—all our own—cups, spoons, room, servants—and the treasure secured, and the haven of all our hopes no longer doubtful or distant. Glorious, beautiful dream! from which death, wrinkles, duns, are quite obliterated. Sip while you may, your pleasant cup of—madness, from that fragile, pretty china, and may the silver spoon wherewith you stir it, prove to have come into the world at the moment of your birth, where fortune is said to place it sometimes. Next morning the sun shone clear over Carwell Grange, bringing into sharp relief the joints and wrinkles of the old gray masonry, the leaves and tendrils of the ivy, and the tufts of grass which here and there sprout fast in the chinks of the parapet, and casting, with angular distinctness upon the shingled roof, the shadows of the jackdaws that circled about the old chimney. A twittering of small birds fills the air, and the solemn cawing comes mellowed on the ear from the dark rookery at the other side of the ravine, that, crossing at the side of the Grange, debouches on the wider and deeper glen that is known as the Vale of Carwell.
Youth enjoys a change of abode, and with the instinct of change and adventure proper to its energies, delights in a new scene.
Charles Fairfield accompanied his young wife, who was full of curiosity, and her head busy with a hundred plans, as in gay and eager spirits she surveyed her little empire.
“This is the garden—I tell you, lest you should mistake it for the forest where the enchanted princess slept, surrounded by great trees and thickets—it excels even the old garden at Wyvern. There are pear-trees, and plum, and cherry, and apple. Upon my word, I forgot they were so huge, and the jungles are raspberries and gooseberries and currants. Did you ever see such thickets, and nettles between. I’m afraid you’ll not make much of this. When I was a boy those great trees looked as big and mossgrown as they do now, and bore such odd crabbed little fruit, and not much even of that.”
“It will be quite beautiful when it is weeded, and flowers growing in the shade, and climbing plants trained up the stems of the trees, and it shan’t cost us anything; but you’ll see how wonderfully pretty it will be.”
“But what is to become of all your pretty plans, if flowers won’t grow without sun. I defy any fairy—even my own bright little one—to make them grow here; but, if you won’t be persuaded, by all means let us try. I think there’s sunshine wherever you go, and I should not wonder, after all, if nature relented, and beautiful miracles were accomplished under your influence.”