Something in the room brought those scenes of bitter grief too vividly before him. It might have been the closeness of the air, or, more probably, the odor rising from a basket of flowers which stood upon the centre-table. He remembered now that Nancy had mentioned its arrival while he was going through the ceremony of taking tea, and he went up to the table and bent over it. Upon a snowy oval of choicest flowers, surrounded by a scarlet border, the word "Welcome" was wrought in purple violets.
The young man smiled as he read the name upon the card attached. He took up one of the white carnations and began fastening it to the lapel of his coat, but put it back at length, and with a glance at the painted faces, whose eyes seemed following his every motion, he took his hat and went out of the house.
His progress through the streets of his native village took the form of an ovation. Nearly every one he met was an old acquaintance or friend. It warmed his heart, and took away the sting of loneliness which he had felt before, to see how cordial were the greetings. Strong, manly grips, kind, womanly hand-pressures, and shy, blushing greetings from full-fledged village beauties, whom he vaguely remembered as lank, sun-burned little girls, met him at every step.
He noticed, and was duly impressed by, the ornate new dwellings, the soldiers' monument, and the tonsorial establishment of Professor Commeraw. But beyond these boasted improvements, it might have been yesterday, instead of four years ago, that he passed along the same street on his way to the station. Even Deacon White's sorrel mare was hitched before the leading grocery-store in precisely the same spot, and blinking dejectedly at precisely the same post, he could have taken his oath, where she had stood and blinked on that morning.
Before the tumble-down structure where, in connection with the sale of petrified candy, withered oranges, fly-specked literature, and gingerpop, the post-office was carried on, sat that genial old reprobate, the post-master, relating for the hundredth time to a sleepy and indifferent audience, his personal exploits in the late war; pausing, however, long enough to bestow upon Horton a greeting worthy of the occasion.
"Welcome home!" said Mr. Doolittle, with an oratorical flourish, as became a politician and a post-master; "welcome back to the land of the free and the home of the brave!"
Whereupon he carefully seated himself on the precarious chair which served him as rostrum, and resumed his gory narrative.
A little further on, another village worthy, Fred Hanniford, cobbler, vocalist, and wit, sat pegging away in the door of his shop, making the welkin ring with the inspiring strains of "The Sword of Bunker Hill," just as in the old days. True, the brilliancy of his tones was somewhat marred by the presence of an ounce or so of shoe-pegs in his left cheek, but this fact had no dampening effect upon the enthusiasm of a select, peanut-consuming audience of small boys on the steps.
He, too, suspended work and song to nod familiarly to his somewhat foreignized young townsman, and watched him turn the corner, fixing curious and jealous eyes upon the receding feet.
"Who made your boots?" he remarked sotto voce, as their firm rap upon the plank sidewalk grew indistinct, which profound sarcasm having extracted the expected meed of laughter from his juvenile audience, Mr. Hanniford resumed his hammer, and burst forth with a high G of astounding volume.