No; life is full of beginnings, and stories can never, never, to all eternity, “conclude.” Because the “Pine Cone Stories” can have but just six volumes, of so many pages each, we must let the story go on without us. But it will not conclude, any more than your life or mine forever. With which little “preachment,” as Miss Alcott’s young people somewhere call it, let us take a last look at the friends whose stories are drifting away out of our sight.
More than three years have passed since Tom delivered that lucky shot at old Silver-Tip; since Bessie gazed thoughtfully down into the mighty cañon in the Yellowstone, and took in her hand the slender ribbon of grass for a token.
It is Christmas time, and we are in an old mansion house in the depths of a deep forest in the Pine Tree State. You recognize the room at once, I hope—for it is Uncle Will’s little secret chamber at the Pines.
It is night, and the North Wind is smiting grandly his “thunder harp of pines,” while the window panes whiten and rattle with the sheets of snow that are flung against them by the storm.
There is a glorious fire in the fireplace, throwing great billows of flame far up the chimney, crackling, snapping and purring, sending a ruddy glow into every corner of the room and over its inmates.
For the chamber is not empty; the fire is not talking to itself, but to a goodly company that gather around it, with all the old-time cheer.
Uncle Will is there, sturdy and broad-shouldered as ever, with hair only a little whiter than when we first met him, standing beside his good horses at the Pineville depot years ago.
Aunt Puss, too, is not far away, and her husband’s occasional “Eunice” is even more full of tenderness than in earlier days, when they met by the lilac bushes.
Close by her side nestles golden-haired Pet, who turns, however, as she talks, to a tall youth with a dark curling mustache, whom she addresses as Randolph. The flush on her cheeks and the brightness in her happy eyes is not alone borrowed from the dancing fire; for Randolph has just stooped down and whispered to his aunt—Pet knew perfectly well, too, what he was saying, sly puss!—that the wedding-day was set for the first of May.
In another corner of the room Tom, now a grave senior at Harvard, is reading by the fire-light a letter postmarked “Portland, Oregon.” I don’t believe Bert Martin wrote it, though there is a great deal in the letter about him; for the handwriting is decidedly feminine. Can it be that Bert employs his sister as an amanuensis?