Having reached Ninth Street he stationed himself on a corner and awaited the owner of the great, glorious grey eyes. He was looking for two glowing eyes in a head wrapped up in a snowy nubia.
So it is with us all. Our last remembrance holds tenaciously upon its pictures; and refuses to surrender them to the march of time and events. After years have changed the faces and scenes we love, we return to them expecting to find them the same as when we left, and feel a dull pain when we find that our memories of the past belong to the past, and are not heirs of the present. So Ben stood, gazing down the street in search of a white nubia, and was fairly startled into open-mouthed amazement when a voice nearly opposite to him said:
"Bertha, dear, I am so sorry that you can not remain with us until next week, if not longer. Must you positively go to-morrow?"
And the person addressed replied:
"I should like to, Mary, but uncle says he positively must go."
The voice of the lady brought Ben's senses back, and there, right before his eyes, was the object of his worship—more lovely, more beautiful, he thought, than he had ever pictured her.
Bertha certainly was gifted with good looks far more generously than her sisters. To be sure she no longer wore a billowy mass of white worsted about her head, that Ben's picture was familiar with, but in its place was a saucy little hat that turned up behind, and an ostrich feather that turned up in front; and at the back of the head and under the cocked-up rim of the hat was a great roll of chestnut hair, with each particular hair leading from the snowy neck thereto drawn as tight and as smooth as the top-hamper of a man-of-war. Two pretty shell-like ears, that this peculiar mode of hair-dressing made stand out from their owner's head like a pair of little wings, were kept from flying away by two diminutive soltaire anchors. Under the feather and under a broad expanse of snowy forehead—roofed over by the architecture of the saucy hat—beamed forth the eyes that had so effectually fastened themselves in Ben's soul. They were lustrous grey orbs in which the sunlight of high noon seemed to have lost itself. Deep and thoughtful, they were, beaming in purity and confidence; alive with kind promptings, and singing an undying melody of love and faith. Just such eyes as we do sometimes see, and ever after remember.
And they lighted up a face worthy to bask in their sunshine. She was dressed richly, but tastefully, with every external evidence of wealth and refinement. Poor Ben's heart sank within him. When now brought face to face with the object of his adoration all his sanguine hopes went down below zero, and the airy castles of his daydreams crumbled to dust. How could he aspire to this elegantly attired and lovely formed mass of femininity! Absurd! He in rags and she in silks! Preposterous! He an unknown tramp, she a wealthy belle! Outrageous! He hastily arrived at the conclusion that he was a fool, and immediately called himself one.
CHAPTER XXII.
OFF FOR NEW ORLEANS.