“No, oh no!” Fanny exclaimed, blushing crimson. “We are not married, and have only stopped over a train to see where father used to live. I am Mark Hilton’s daughter, and I want you to show me his room and his office and everything, and then we are going to the cellar hole and the grave, and everywhere.”
Uncle Zacheus was at first too astonished to speak and stared open-mouthed at the girl whose blue eyes fascinated and confused him, they were so bright and large and clear, and seemed to take in everything at once within their vision. His wife, who had stopped to slip on a clean white apron and smooth her hair before going to receive her guests, now appeared on the scene, and, at sight of her, Uncle Zach recovered his speech so far as to give vent to his usual ejaculation. “Wall, I’ll be dumbed! Yes, I will!” he said, advancing toward Fanny and offering his hand.
For an instant she drew back. She had not expected what she found. Everything was so different from her life that it was hard to associate her father with this place and this queer little man making so free with her. A look from Roy reassured her and she gave her hand to Mr. Taylor, who nearly crushed it before he let go his hold. Roy was explaining now and talking to Mrs. Taylor, who remembered him having been there with his father and mother, and finally succeeded in conveying that fact to her husband’s rather hazy mind.
“Don’t I remember them young folks who was here a few years ago? Wall, I guess I do, and this is their boy and girl? I don’t understand it,” he said; then, as it began to dawn upon him more clearly, he continued, addressing himself to Fanny, “I know now; you are Mark’s girl, but you don’t look like him, unless it’s some trick with your eyes,—nor like your mother, neither. Who are you like, I wonder?”
He was scanning her very closely, and without at all considering what she was saying, Fanny answered him: “Perhaps I am like father’s great-grandmother, ’Tina. Did you ever see her?”
“Bless my soul, child; how old do you take me to be?” and Uncle Zach burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m only eighty-three, and Miss Dalton,—that’s ’Tina,—has been dead a hundred and twenty years; but I believe you are like her. They say she was han’som’ as a picter, with blue eyes and yaller hair and clingin’ ways.”
Fanny was not particularly pleased to have her resemblance to ’Tina discussed, and Roy, who wished to change the conversation, said abruptly, “Can we go into the office where Mr. Hilton used to spend his time?”
“Certainly, and all over the house, too,” Mr. Taylor replied, leading the way to the office, where Fanny examined everything and sat in every chair and looked over the register of years ago which was brought out for her to see.
Turning back to the summer when her mother was there her tears fell fast on the yellow page, where traces of her father’s handwriting seemed to bring him near to her. Uncle Zacheus was crying, too. He did a good deal of that in his old age, but he apologized for it to Fanny, saying, “You must excuse me. I always cry when I think of Mark,—the best clerk a man ever had in a hotel, and when I heard he was dead, I cried myself sick. Didn’t I Dot? And Jeff wasn’t mentioned in the notice. He ain’t dead. No, sir! I’m always expectin’ him home. He’ll come before I die. Yes, marm! You want to see where your pa slep’? You shall; yes, marm! but ’tain’t no great of a place. You see them was good days, with the house so full that Mark had to sleep where he could catch it, close to the office; here ’tis.”
He threw open the door of a very small and plainly furnished room, at which Fanny looked askance, mentally comparing it with her own and her mother’s luxurious sleeping apartments. But she wouldn’t flinch, and stroked the pillow and smoothed the patchwork coverlet and tried hard to keep her tears from falling again. Everything was so different from what her father’s surroundings ought to have been. Even the saloon her mother had occupied and the pictures of Dot’s ancestors failed to impress her. Everything was scrupulously clean, but the furniture was old, the carpets were faded, the paper was dingy, and there was everywhere an air from which she shrank. Accustomed to every luxury money could buy, she was an aristocrat to her finger tips, and the Prospect House, as she saw it on that November day, was not at all to her taste.