As I released his arm, he shot wildly up the lane, and tumbled headlong in at the weather-porch that guarded the northern door.
In a few minutes, a woman's head appeared and took an observation, while her two hands were visible smoothing her hair and rapidly adjusting an apron. Then the whole long figure emerged. At first she walked warily, stopping once or twice as though about to turn back; then she gave a long look, and hurried down the lane, a broad smile breaking out, token of recognition. Her voice reached me first, "Well, I do declare, I'm tickled most to death to see you!"
With the last words came a mighty grip of the hands, and Sally looked at me with eyes overflowing with tears and gladness.
Most exquisite and dignified reader, didst thou ever think, when raising to thy lips the cut-glass goblet of iced water, poured from a silver pitcher filled at a faucet supplied through a leaden pipe that in its turn is fed by miles of underground aqueduct, that thou wouldst like rather to slake thy thirst at some natural spring bubbling over mossy stones and prostrate grasses? For once or twice, may be? If so, all hail! for thou art not quite a mummy. Underneath thy social swathings still beats a faint echo of the bounding pulse of some free-born ancestor, a sheik of the desert, a dusky forest-chief, a patriarch of the tents. Trampled on, thou wilt not turn to dust, but to fire; and the papyrus is unfinished on which shall be written the story of thy life.
There have been times, too, in which thou hast thought that not only thy drink was far-fetched and no sweeter for the fetching, but that the smiles, the welcomes, the fare-wells, the friendships were all stale and unrefreshing. Thou hast longed for the generous love, which, while it will bear nothing from thee, will bear all things for thee; for the honest hate that carries its blade in sight, and lurks not in sly and sanctimonious speech and downcast eyes; for the noble tongue that knows not how to tell the spirit of a lie and save the letter.
Here now before me were all these. Refreshing, n'est ce pas? and very delightful—for a time.
Blanch and I were whirled into the house in the midst of a tornado of welcomes, apologies, regrets, wonderings, and questions innumerable. But as we were whisked through the kitchen, I had time to see all the old landmarks; the great stone fire-place, with a mantel-piece nearly out of reach, the bed, with its bright patch-work quilt, the broom of cedar-boughs behind the door, the strip-bottom chairs, the large blocks to eke out with when more seats were needed, the rough walls, the immaculate neatness.
There were two rooms in the house, and we were suffered to sit only when we had reached the second. This was glorious with pictorial newspapers pasted over the log walls, with a Job's patience quilt on the bed, with two painted wooden chairs, and a chintz-covered divan, a rag mat on the floor, two brass candlesticks on the mantel-piece, a looking-glass six inches long, and a gay picture of a yellow-haired, praying Samuel, dressed in a blue night-gown, and kneeling on a red cushion.
Sally was so delightedly flustered by our coming that, as she said, she did not know whether she was on her head or her heels, a doubt which so sensibly affected her movements that she was every moment making little inconsequent rushes where she had no need to go, and repeating the same things over and over.
Presently she sat still with a start, and listened to a heavy step that came through the porch and into the kitchen.