CHAPTER XXIV.
AT LAST!
"And there was light around her brow,
A holiness in those dark eyes,
Which showed, though wandering earthward now,
Her spirit's home was in the skies."
wo years had passed and gone.
It was drawing toward sunset of a clear, bright, breezy day, when a crowd of people "might have been seen," and were seen, too, hurrying down to one of the wharves of B——, to watch the arrival of the steamer from Europe. Throngs of people who had friends on board came trooping down, and watched with eager eyes the stately vessel as it smoked and puffed its way, like an apoplectic alderman, to the shore.
Among these lounged a young man, good-looking and fashionably dressed, and evidently got up regardless of expense. There was a certain air of self-complacency about him, as he stroked a pair of most desirable curling whiskers, that said, as plainly as words, he was "somebody," and knew it. Another young republican, puffing a cigar, stood beside him, and both were watching, with the careless nonchalance of sovereigns in their own right, the throng of foreigners that stood on the steamer's deck.
"A crowd there—rather!" remarked the hero of the cigar, as he fastidiously held it between his finger and thumb and knocked the ashes off the end. "Our European brethren have arrived in time to see the elephant to good advantage. Young America will be out in great force to-night."
"To cheer the new governor—ye-es," drawled the other, as he, too, lighted a cigar, and began smoking like a living Vesuvius.
"What a thing it is to be the people's favorite—a man of the people, that style of thing, you know—isn't it, Curtis?" said the first speaker.