“And how is Mr. Germaine and Miss Erminie, Mrs. Gudge?”
“Very well, indeed! Lor’ bless me! you would hardly know Mr. Ray; he’s shot up like a Maypole, and got one of them nasty mustarches onto his upper lip. Of all the ugly things they beats all. It actually makes my flesh creep to see them eating or drinking with them on. I’m glad you don’t wear one, Master Ranty, for of all the disgraceful things—” Mrs. Gudge paused, and rolled her eyes as in intense disgust, by way of filling up the hiatus.
“It’s no merit of mine, I am afraid,” said Ranty, passing his hand over his lip; “I’ve been mowing away for the last three years; but owing to some mysterious dispensation of Providence, or the barrenness of the soil, or some other inscrutable reason, nothing can be induced to sprout. I feel myself put upon by Fate, I do so, Mrs. Gudge! There’s Ray, now with whiskers, flourishing, no doubt, like a green bay tree; and here am I, a young man twice as deserving, with a face as smooth as a sheet of foolscap. It’s a darned shame, and I won’t put up with it, hanged if I do! Mrs. Gudge, let me have a horse and wagon, or a superannuated gander, or a go-cart, or some other quadruped to take me home. Since I must tear myself away, I may as well do it first as last.”
Mrs. Gudge opened the door, and called to Bobby to bring round a horse; and soon after that hopeful made his appearance, leading the animal by the bridle. Ranty waved a good-by to Mrs. Gudge, flung a handful of coppers to her son, jumped into the saddle, and was off, as Bob Gudge afterward expressed it “like Old Nick in a gale of wind.”
Ranty’s eyes lit up with pleasure as the old, familiar scenes came once more in view. There was the forest road, bringing back the memory of the dangerous, practical joke they had played on Pet. There was Dismal Hollow, silent, grim gloomy, and lonely—a fit habitation for Miss Priscilla Toosypegs. There was the Barrens; there was the little, white, vine-shaded cottage; and yonder in the distance, dazzling in its spotless paint, was the staring, garish White Squall. There, too, was the brown-scorched road leading through the purple bloom of the heath to his own ancestral home of Heath Hill.
“Now to give them a surprise,” said Ranty, as he alighted at the little cottage-gate and approached the door; “wonder if Minnie will know me; I hope she is in.”
The parlor-door lay wide open, and he looked in unobserved. It was the day on which Judge Lawless had proposed, a few hours later; and Erminie, whose gentle nature had not quite recovered from the wound his threats and harsh words had given her, sat alone with the evening shadows falling around her—her head resting on her hand, and her large, soft blue eyes dark with unshed tears. Pet had just departed; and the quietness and reaction following the luster of her exciting presence made the silence and loneliness more dreary still.
Ranty’s first impulse had been to rush in, catch her in his arms, and give her a rousing salute; but the moment he saw her sweet, pale face and drooping figure, a feeling more nearly approaching to timidity than anything our impudent young sailor had ever felt before, held him back. Somehow he had expected to see a slender, delicate little girl, such as he had last beheld her; but she had passed away forever, and here in her place sat a tall, elegant girl, with a face as lovely as the hazel-haired Madonna’s that had smiled upon him in the dim, old cathedral-aisles of glorious Italy. He took one step forward; she lifted her head with a startled look; her eyes met his, and she started impetuously to her feet.
“Erminie!”
“Ranty! Oh, Ranty! I am so glad!”