In the most protected corner of this pleasant enclosure, and near the glowing fire, sat old Mr. Armstrong with his son by his side, cheering the old man by his pleasant conversation. Mary, as she entered, thought she had never seen her father to so much advantage. The tender, deferential manner of the son to the aged father was a new phase in his character which charmed his youthful daughter. Mrs. John Armstrong took her seat at the tea-table, while her husband rose with a native politeness to place a chair for Mary, which made her forget that his dress was the homely garb of a farmer.
"Give up your seat to your daughter, Edward, and let Mary sit by me."
The change was quickly made, and then the old gentleman said—
"Ah, my dear, I can see you more plainly now in the light of the lamp; there is a look of the little child I remember so well, although you are grown so tall and womanly."
"Do you not think Mary is like her mother, uncle?" said cousin Sarah; "and yet she has a look sometimes that reminds me of Edward."
"Never mind whom she resembles," said the old man; "if my granddaughter is, as I hear from her father, a dutiful and affectionate daughter, that is of far more value than her personal appearance."
How pleasantly that evening passed! Mary played a game of chess with the old gentleman, whose mind was still clear, notwithstanding his eighty-two years, and delighted him by her quick intelligence, and perhaps not less by finding that he could beat her after a well-matched contest.
When Mary laid her head on her pillow that night in the pretty white bedroom, as she called it, she felt that there could be found much more real happiness in a country life than in all the gaieties and frivolities of a London season.
But Mary had yet to learn the real foundation of the peace and harmony which seemed to surround the residents at Meadow Farm like a halo, and even to make her sleep more sweetly in her white-curtained bed than she had ever done even in the richly furnished rooms and luxurious couches at her aunt Elston's, in Portland Place, after an evening spent in gaiety and excitement.
For the first time in her life Mary had knelt at family prayer.