“I allus take a far look from here,” she said. After both had drunk their fill of beauty, Emily pointed eastward, where against the horizon a great blue wall was dimly visible, remarking, “Yan side of them is where you lived at when you was little, maw says.”
Miss Scarborough looked once, then turned almost violently away, cutting the horse with her whip.
Going down the ridge, Emily pointed out her home in the valley below. Very lonely and remote it seemed, folded away here in the hills, with never another habitation in sight. No wonder that here a branch of the Scarboroughs had been swallowed up and lost. Drawing nearer, the visitor saw a large log-house in a strip of bottom-land, with corn-fields stretching up the mountains on all sides.
Dosia awaited them at the stile, and her greeting was full of kindness and dignity.
“Cousin Emily Scarborough,” she said with emotion, “it gives me the most gratefulest pleasure of my life to welcome you to my home and my family.”
Edwin Vance, her tall husband, lifted the guest down, and she was conducted into the principal room of the house.
Here, when there was opportunity, she looked about. It was a huge room, with bare floor, log walls, and massive beams of hewn timber. The furniture—all home-made—consisted of three bedsteads, a chest of drawers, and a number of splint-bottomed chairs. On the beds were beautiful woven coverlets, and a pitcher of rich dahlias adorned the “fireboard.” Nothing was ugly, nothing useless; and any effect of bleakness would have been obviated either by the great open fire, or by the presence of Dosia, sitting with her four youngest children crowded against her, her kind face, warm brown eyes, and auburn hair radiating light and cheer.
After a while Edwin and the two small boys left the room, and soon the lowing of cattle, whinnying of nags, squealing of hogs, and excited clatter of fowls announced the joyful hour of feeding, while melodious calls of “coo-nanny, coo-nanny, coo-sheep, coo-sheep,” echoed back from the mountain-tops. Then Dosia went, followed by the five little girls. Miss Scarborough heard her giving quiet orders out in the open hallway that separated the two large rooms of the lower story. Later Emily returned, to say with awe in her voice:
“Cousin Emily, we are aiming to eat out of the Scarborough spoons to-night.”
“You have never used them before?” inquired Miss Scarborough.