An unexpected turn in Hugh’s affairs made it no longer necessary for him to remain in the sultry climate of New Orleans, and just one week from his mother’s departure from Spring Bank he reached it, expressing unbounded surprise when he heard from Aunt Eunice where his mother had gone, and how she had gone.
“Fool and his money soon parted,” Hugh said,
“But who is that woman,—the one who sent the money?”
“A Mrs. Johnson, an old friend of your mother,” Aunt Eunice replied, while Hugh looked up quickly, wondering why the Johnsons should be so continually thrust upon him, when the only Johnson for whom he cared was dead years ago.
“And the young lady—what about her?” he asked, while Aunt Eunice told him the little she knew, which was that Mrs. Johnson wished her daughter to come to Spring Bank, but she did not know what they had concluded upon.
“That she should not come, of course,” Hugh said. “They had no right to give her a home without my consent, and I’ve plenty of young ladies at Spring Bank now. Oh, it was such a relief when I was gone to know that in all New Orleans there was not a single hoop annoyed on my account. I had a glorious time doing as I pleased,” and helping his aunt to mount the horse which had brought her to Spring Bank, Hugh returned to the house, which seemed rather lonely, notwithstanding that he had so often wished he could once more be alone, just as he was before his mother came.
On the whole, however, he enjoyed his freedom from restraint, and very rapidly fell back into his old loose way of living, bringing his dogs into the parlor, and making it a repository for both his hunting and fishing apparatus.
“It’s splendid to do as I’m a mind to,” he said, one hot August morning, nearly three weeks after his mother’s departure, as with his box of worms upon the music stool, in the little room which ’Lina claimed as exclusively her own, he sat mending his long fish line, whistling merrily, and occasionally thrusting back from his forehead the mass of curling hair, which somewhat obstructed his vision.
Around him upon the floor lay half a dozen dogs, some asleep, and others eyeing his movements curiously, as if they knew and appreciated what he was doing.
“There isn’t a finer lot of dogs in Kentucky,” soliloquized the young man, as he ran his eye over them; “but wouldn’t my lady at Saratoga rave if she knew I’d taken her boudoir for a kennel, and kept my bootjack, my blacking brush, and Sunday shirts all on her piano! Good place for them, so handy to get at, though I don’t suppose it’s quite the thing to live so like a savage. Halloo, Mug, what do you want?” he asked, as a little mulatto girl appeared in the door.