Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

Owing to some defect found in the title to the Ponsonby plateau after Jack had bargained for it, there was a delay of two or three months and it was the first of June before the way was clear for him to begin his new house. As he meant to superintend it himself and work with his own hands as much as possible there was ample time to finish it before Christmas, the day appointed for the wedding. After many consultations and a great deal of walking around the plateau to get the very best point for views in every direction, it was decided to build the cottage a little to the north of the spot where the Ponsonby house had stood. This necessitated a new cellar, and on the morning when the work was to commence Jack came to us and said, “I wish you’d all come up and see the first furrow turned. It will be something like laying the corner stone.”

As the day was one of Phyllis’s “clarin’ up” days we were glad to escape from the discomfort of it, and deciding to have a kind of picnic we took our lunch with us, and sitting down on a bit of broken wall in the shadow of a dogwood tree Katy, Paul and I looked on while Fan and Jack steadied the plow and drove the horses around the ground staked out for the cellar.

“Don’t this make you think of Romulus and Remus building Rome? I don’t believe, though, that Jack will kill me if I jump over the wall,” Fan said, laughingly, as she let go the plow and bounding over the furrow came up to where we were sitting, flushed with exercise and seemingly very happy.

When the horses had done all they could and the workmen had taken the cellar in hand we sat down to our lunch, which was nearly finished when we heard the sound of voices coming up the hill and a moment after a gentleman and lady came into view, walking very leisurely, but quickening their steps when they saw us.

“Colonel and Miss Errington,” Fan exclaimed. “What evil genius sent them here to-day!”

Was it an evil genius, or good, or was it fate which sent them there? I often asked myself afterwards, when a great happiness and a great sorrow followed as the result of their coming.

“Here you are! What a climb, and how tired and hot I am,” Miss Errington said, as, after shaking hands with us, she dropped down upon the nearest big stone and began to fan herself.

It was years since we had seen either the Colonel or his sister, but it did not seem to me that they had changed much. Both were a little stouter, perhaps, and there were a few white hairs in the Colonel’s side-whiskers, worn after the English fashion. Otherwise he was the same tall, elegant man, with a military look and air, and the same cold, hard expression in his eyes which, as they had always done, softened when they rested on Fan. Every color became her, but to me she had never been as handsome as since she had worn black. It toned down her brilliant color, and made her look more womanly and lovable. That day her dress was a thin muslin, which showed her white neck and arms, and she had pinned some white roses at her throat and fastened some in her hair “to scratch Jack when he tries to kiss me,” she said, but really because she inwardly chafed against black and wanted some color to relieve it.

The Colonel was very polite to me, and said to Katy, “Upon my soul, how you have grown!” and “What little shaver is this?” to Paul. Then he took Fan’s hand and held it much longer than he had held mine, and looked at her until she shrank from him and moved nearer to Jack. Miss Errington was explaining that, as they were in Richmond and had not seen us in years, they had decided to surprise us with a call.

“We drove from the station to the house,” she said, “and found your factotum, Phyllis, asleep on the front piazza with mop and pails and broom at her side. It was a work of time to rouse her, but when she was fairly awake she was profuse in her excuses, saying she was that tired in her bones that she “had done drapped asleep arsidentally,” and also that you were all digging the cellar for Mas’r Jack’s and Miss Fanny’s new house, from which I infer that congratulations are en règle, or are you already married?”