CHAPTER II.
A DINNER AT THE GRANGE—A PAIR OF OWLS.
As we passed up the gravel walk of the Grange a face was trying its prettiest to look scoldingly out of the window, but could not succeed. When the eyes lighted upon my companion, face and eyes together disappeared. It was a face that I had seen grow under my eyes, but it had never occurred to me hitherto that it had grown so beautiful. Could that tall young lady, who did the duties of mistress of the Grange so demurely, be the little fairy whom only yesterday I used to toss upon my shoulder and carry out into the barnyard to see the fowls, one hand twined around my neck, and the other waving her magic wand with the action of a little queen—the same magic wand that I had spent a whole hour and a half—a boy’s long hour and a half—in peeling and notching with my broken penknife, engraving thereon the cabalistic characters “F. N.,” which, as all the world was supposed to know, signified “Fairy Nell”? And that was “Fairy” who had just disappeared from the honeysuckles. Faith! a far more dangerous fairy than when I was her war-horse and she my imperious queen.
I introduced my companion as an old school-fellow of mine to my father and sister. So fine-looking a young man could not fail to impress my father favorably, who, notwithstanding his seclusion, had a keen eye for persons and appearances. How so fine-looking a young man impressed my sister I cannot say, for it is not given to me to read ladies’ hearts. The dinner was passing pleasantly enough, when one of those odd revulsions of feeling that come to one at times in the most inopportune situations came over me. I am peculiarly subject to fits of this nature, and only time and years have enabled me to overcome them to any extent. By the grave of a friend who was dear to me, and in presence of his weeping relatives, some odd recollection has risen up as it were out of the freshly-dug grave, and grinned at me over the corpse’s head, till I hardly knew whether the tears in my eyes were brought there by laughter or by grief. Just on the attainment of some success, for which I had striven for months or years, may be, and to which I had devoted every energy that was in me, while the flush of it was fresh on my cheek and in my heart, and the congratulations of friends pouring in on me, has come a drear feeling like a winter wind across my summer garden to blast the roses and wither the dew-laden buds just opening to the light. Why this is so I cannot explain; that it is so I know. It is a mockery of human nature, and falls on the harmony of the soul like that terrible “ha! ha!” of the fiend who stands by all the while when poor Faust and innocent Marguerite are opening their hearts to each other.
“And so, Mr. Goodal, you are an old friend of Roger’s? He has told me about most of his friends. It is strange he never mentioned your name before.”
“It is strange,” I broke in hurriedly. “Kenneth is the oldest of all, too. I found him first in the thirteenth century. He bears his years well, does he not, Fairy?”
My father and Nellie both looked perplexed. Kenneth laughed.
“What in the world are you talking about, Roger?” asked my father in amazement.
“Where do you think I found him? Burrowing at the tomb of the Herberts, as though he were anxious to get inside and pass an evening with them.”
“And judging the past by the present, a very agreeable evening I should have spent,” said Kenneth gayly.
“Well, sir, I will not deny that you would have found excellent company,” responded my father, pleased at the compliment. “The Herberts. ..” he began.