A few steps more and a rustic gate was opened and some one came and stood under the archway of evergreen branches, intertwined with some drooping vines. She was facing the West, looking down the lane, shading her eyes with her hand, although the sun was almost down. Just for a moment she stood in the bright sunset glow, under the green archway, shading her brown eyes from the light, looking down the shadowy lane; and, as she so stood, she seemed a very fair and graceful girl indeed. An instant more and the children, in the importance of their mission as baggage-carriers, pushed past her, and she retreated with them toward the house.
"Come, Rose! Here we are!" called Carl to her. And she turned and met them as they reached the gate.
"You are welcome," she said to Dick when he was introduced at the gate.
"You are welcome," said Mrs. Stoffs, coming toward them from the porch.
"You are welcome," repeated Mrs. Alaine, at the door. And Dick had not a word of answer to any one of them.
They were to him as grand as princesses and as gracious as queens, as they came forth to receive him and bid him welcome to their little cottage; and Dick was not used to courts or to queens and princesses, so he could only bow and shake the hands so cordially extended to him.
I am afraid my hero was not at all happy for the first few minutes that he sat on the stoop between Mrs. Stoffs and Mrs. Alaine, not knowing what answer to make to even their simplest remark, and that he was much relieved when they joined their voices to the hubbub the children were making around Carl. Such shyness as Dick's is very painful to the spectators, as well as to the embarrassed one; but, then, there's this to be said about it, when it is once entirely conquered it never can come back again, and I fancy there are some very nice people in the world, now very self-possessed and perfectly well-bred, who would give much to feel again the awkwardness and embarrassment which, once upon a time, caused them such keen annoyance. The women pitied Dick, but liked him none the less for the color that would come into his face and the hesitation of his replies; but their feeling for the stranger was greater than any pleasure to themselves, and so it was not long before they went into the house with the declared intention of "getting tea." But going into the house was not going away altogether, for the room which served for parlor, library, sitting-room, dining-room, and all, had a low window opening on the stoop, and Carl and Dick could see them well, and speak, if they chose, without raising their voices, as they went-back and forth from the table to the closet, and from the closet to the table, not to mention innumerable visits to Carl's basket, which seemed a pantry in itself. The children ran in and out, and one jolly little one, called Trot, who was as round as a dumpling, and was too young to be shy for very long, informed Dick she was glad he had come, for they were to have sweet-cakes for tea. Occasionally Rose would come and stand at the window and say something to tease "Uncle Carl," who was not slow to "give her as good as he got." Thus gradually Dick became more at ease, and began to distinguish a difference in the tones of the children's voices, and to take note of the strange Sunday-like stillness which, except for the merry noises in the house, was complete, and, to him, wonderful.
I think a tea-table is one of the nicest sights in the world. If there is a grain of poetry in a woman, and I believe that there is no woman without a grain of poetry in her, it will surely, mark my words, however rough and prosaic she may be, come out about tea-time. That was a very pretty tea-table at which Dick took his place that evening; there was no silver nor China, and there was, perhaps, too great an abundance of good things; but it startled Dick, and I contend that it was nice and pretty, if only for the reason that it had a clean table-cloth, a bunch of flowers, and every dish in its proper place. Mrs. Alaine, who was only a feminine edition of her brother Carl, sat at the head of the table, in a clean calico dress, with a white collar and a blue ribbon. She had a child on each side of her, whose glee, at the prospect of sweet-cakes and peaches (out of Carl's basket) after they had eaten their bread and butter, she tried to moderate with a smiling, "Hush, children! What will Mr. Heremore think of you?" Mrs. Stoffs, who had also a round flat face, and was dressed in a clean calico, with white collar and a knot of pink ribbons, Dick had seen many times before, and dearly loved the good humor that bubbled all over her face whenever she spoke. She also had a child on each side of her, whose audible whispers about the good things coming she answered and mysteriously increased by promises of the same again another day. But opposite Dick was a face that was not round nor especially good-humored; for the two children under charge of Rose were the least repressible of the whole flock, and they tried her slender stock of patience sorely; especially, as she said afterward to her mother, with many blushes and half crying at the recollection, "as they would say such things right before the strange gentleman!" Rose had a pretty blue muslin, with a tiny bit of lace around the neck, for her raiment, and there was a something red, green, brown, blue, pink, or yellow, that fluttered here and there before Dick's eyes whenever she moved to help the children, or turned her young face, with its flitting colors, toward him. But whether it were a ribbon, or a blush, or the hue of her hair, or an aureole around her head, and whether it were no color at all, or all colors together, or a rainbow out of the clouds, I do not think Dick had, for one moment, a definite idea—at least, while it was flitting before his eyes.
After tea, Carl took out his pipe, and settled into his big chair on the porch; and the children, having got somewhat over their awe of the stranger, volunteered to take him down the lane, and show him where there had been a robin's nest last spring, an expedition, however, that was vetoed by Carl on the ground that you couldn't see even a robin's nest in the dark. Then Rose came out to tease Uncle Carl again; but, forgetting her purpose, stood where the light from within seemed to set her in glory, like the angels in pictures; and by and by, it came about, no one knew how, that her shrine was vacant, and she, a very nice little girl with her hands in the pockets—very impracticable pockets they were—of her muslin apron, was telling Dick, with the children as prompters and commentators, the full particulars of the finding of the robin's nest, and what work she had had to keep the children from bringing sorrow and dismay to the hearts of the parent robins by stealing away their little ones. Then, as the moon rose, there was no reason why the children should not take Dick down the lane to show to him the tree where the nest had been; and then it was needful that he should know just how far it was from sister Rose's window, and yet how quickly, on hearing the shouts of rejoicing, she had come to Mrs. Robin's assistance. Then it was so funny to see a man who had never climbed a tree, that it was needful two or three should go up one to show how it is done. Then, too, there were lightning-bugs by the million around them, and as Dick had never seen anything like them, unless it was fire-crackers on Fourth of July night, they had to catch several for his investigation. When Rose told how those little things are really the people of the forest, who are so timid they do not dare to come out in the daytime, but do all their praying by night, and have always been good friends to children, showing them their way home when lost, and driving away the ghosts that would frighten the wanderers, then the children opened their brown hands and let them fly away, promising never to make prisoners of them again.
And so, though Dick still felt strange and shy, it was not in such an unpleasant way as when he sat on the porch trying to answer Mrs. Alaine and Mrs. Stoffs when they spoke to him. When, at last, he closed his eyes that night, he was half ready to admit that "the country" might almost be the enchanted land some people had made it out to be.