It would be a scene that for you, friend, and you, worn and weary with the noise and rush and excitement of this great Babylon—where we are all speeding so fast through life—to look upon with longing gaze, to remember afterwards with aching hearts; but people in the country view these things otherwise, and, accordingly, it was with far different feelings to any you would experience at sight of such a sunset, that Squire Dudley occasionally lifted his eyes to look towards the glowing west, ere dropping them again on the Times, the news in which Miss Ormson, seated on the ground at his feet, was kind enough to share with him.
Over the grass were scattered five other Dudleys, ranging in age from fifteen years upwards; one of whom, Alick, came up to his brother, and interrupted his study of the price of shares with—
“I wonder what time mother will get home; have you really no idea by which train she is coming?”
“Not the slightest,” said Arthur, laying down his paper, somewhat to the discomfiture of the young lady, who had been interesting herself with an “Extraordinary Elopement” paragraph; “and how often, Alick, am I to tell you not to call Heather ‘mother.’ It is not enough that I have to support you all, but you must persist in calling my wife, who is almost as young as Agnes, ‘mother.’ Mother, indeed! I detest such childishness!”
“If I had a mother like Heather, I should call her mother, and nothing else,” interposed Bessie, from her lowly position on the grass. “Don’t be silly, Arthur; let your brothers and sisters speak of your wife as they have found her.”
“But it irritates me,” persisted the Squire; “while they were young, it did not so much matter; now, however, when they are all growing up into men and women, the name sounds absurd. Heather does not look a day older than Agnes.”
“That is the beauty of the thing,” returned his opponent. “If Heather looked fifty, or even as old as you do, the charm would be dispelled.”
“Thank you for the implied compliment,” he returned, reddening. It was a sore point with him that his youth was gone, that his life had borne no fruit; and, even had the world prospered with him, it is not a pleasant thing for a man to be told he looks old by a pretty girl!
“Well, you know, Arthur,” said the same girl, frank as she was pretty, “you never will look so young as your wife. In the first place, she is ten years younger than you; and in the second, you ought to take a leaf out of her book, and learn contentment. You ought to cease grumbling and making yourself and other people wretched. You ought to think yourself lucky you have got Berrie Down Hollow, instead of always wishing you were Lord Chancellor, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or King of England, or something of that kind.”
“What has all this got to do with my brothers and sisters calling my wife their mother?” he asked. “They have got a mother of their own, and one mother ought to be quite enough for any person.”