Rose is so bright, and glowing, and happy!
Mrs. Elderkin in her rocking-chair, with her gray hair carefully plaited under the white lace cap whose broad strings fall on either shoulder, is a picture of motherly dignity. Her pleasant "Good evening, Adèle," would alone have paid the warm-hearted exile for her walk.
Then follow games, chat, and an occasional noisy joke from the Squire, until the nine o'clock town-bell gives warning, and Adèle wends homeward under convoy of the gallant Phil.
"Good night, Adèle!"
"Good night, Phil!"
Only this at the gate. Then the Doctor's evening prayer; and after it,—in the quiet chamber, where her sweet head lay upon the pillow,—dreams. With recollections more barren than those of most of her years, of any early home, Adèle still dreamed as hopefully as any of a home to come.
XXX.
In the autumn of 1836, Maverick wrote to his friend, the Doctor, that, in view of the settled condition of business, he intended to visit America some time in the course of the following season. He preferred, however, that Adèle should not be made acquainted with his expected coming. He believed that it would be a pleasant surprise for his child; nor did he wish her anticipations of his arrival to divert her from the usual current of her study and every-day life.
"Above all," he writes, "I wish to see her as she is, without any note of preparation. You will therefore, I beg, my dear Johns, keep from her scrupulously all knowledge of my present intentions, (which may possibly miscarry, after all,) and let me see, to the very finest touch, whether of a ribbon or of a ringlet, how far you have New-Englandized my dear girl. I form a hundred pictures in my fancy; but every new letter from her somehow disturbs the old image, and another is conjured up. The only real thing in my mind is, after all, a little child of eight, rosy and piquantly coquettish, who slaps my cheek when I tease her, and who, as I bid her adieu at last upon the ship's deck, looks through her tears at me and waves her little kerchief.
"It is quite possible that I may manage for her return with me, (of this plan, too, I beg you to give no hint,) and in view of it I would suggest that any available occasion be seized upon to revive her knowledge of French, which, I fear, in your staid household she may almost have forgotten. Tell dear Adèle that I am sometimes at Le Pin, where her godmother never fails to inquire after her and call down blessings on the dear child."