Dorothy and Miss Meechim and the children greeted each other with smiles and glad, gay words. Yes, all wuz a happy confusion of light words, gay laughter, Saratoga trunks, smiles, joy, satchel bags––we had got home.
As I stood there surrounded by all that I prized most on earth I had a glimpse of a haggard lookin’ form arrayed in tattered finery, a bent figure, a young old face, old with drink and dissipation, that looked some way familiar though I couldn’t place her. She looked at our party with a strange interest and seemed to say some murmured words of prayer or blessing or appeal, and disappeared––soon forgot in our boundless joy and the cares tendin’ to our baggage.
Arvilly wuz glad to set her feet on shore, for she too loved her native land with the love that a good principled, but stern stepmother has for a interestin’ but worrisome child that she’s bringin’ up by hand. She thought she would go with the children to their boarding-place, havin’ knowed Miss Eliphalet Snow in their young days, when Miss Snow wuz high-headed and looked down on her, and wantin’ to dant her, I spoze, with accounts of her foreign travel. And we parted to meet agin in the mornin’ to resoom our voyage to Jonesville––blessed harbor where we could moor our two barks, Josiah’s and mine, and be at rest.
Miss Meechim and Dorothy and Robert laid out to start for California the next day, as business wuz callin’ Robert there loud and he had to respond.
And I may as well tell it now as any time, for it has got to be told. I knowed it wuz told to me in confidence, and it must be kep’ for a spell anyway, Robert and Dorothy wuz engaged, and they wuz goin’ to be married in a short time in her own beautiful home in San Francisco. Now you needn’t try to git me to tell who told me, for I am not as sot as cast iron on that, I shall mention no names, only simply remarkin’ that Dorothy and Robert set store by me and I by 448 them. Them that told me said that they felt like death to not tell Miss Meechim of the engagement, but knowin’ her onconquerable repugnance to matrimony and to Dorothy’s marriage in particular, and not knowin’ but what the news would kill her stun dead, them that told me said they felt that they had better git her back to her own native shores before bein’ told, which I felt wuz reasonable.
How I did hate to part with sweet Dorothy, I loved her and she me visey versey. And Robert Strong, he sot up in my heart next to Thomas J., and crowdin’ up pretty clost to him too. Miss Meechim also had her properties, and we had gone through wearisome travel, dangers and fatigues, pleasant rest, delightful sight-seeing, poor vittles, joy and grief together, and it wuz hard to break up old ties. But it had to be. Our life here on this planet is made up of meetin’s and partin’s. It is hail and farewell with us from the cradle to the grave.
We all retired early, bein’ tired out, and we slept well, little thinkin’ of the ghastly shape that would meet us on the thresholt of the new day. But, oh, my erring but beloved country! why ortn’t we to expect it as long as you keep the mills a-goin’ that turns out such black, ghastly shadders by the thousands and thousands all the time, all the time, to enwrap your children.
Dorothy never knowed it––what wuz the use of cloudin’ her bright young life with the awful shadder? But then, as I told Robert, that black, dretful pall hangs over every home and every heart in our country and is liable to fall anywhere and at any time, no palace ruff is too high and no hovel ruff is too low to be agonized and darkened by its sombry folds.
But he said it would make Dorothy too wretched, and he could not have her told, and I agreed to it, but of course I told my pardner and his heart wuz wrung and his bandanna wet as sop in consequence on’t. And he told Miss Meechim, too, that mornin’, and her complaisant belief in genteel drinkin’ and her conservative belief in the Poor Man’s Club, wuz 449 shook hard––how hard I didn’t know until afterwards. Oh, how she, too, loved Aronette! The children when they wuz told on’t mourned because we did, and on their own account too, for they sot store by her what little they had seen of her––for nobody could see her without loving her.
As for Arvilly, her ideas on intemperance couldn’t be added to or diminished by anything, but she wep’ and cried for days.