“The Oldbridge Industrial Exhibits opens to-morrow night,” General
Adgate, tentatively, said one day. “Do you care to go? You'll find
all your friends. The Light Infantry Band will play to us. It's rather
jolly.”
If New England days in old New England houses are fruitful (to young
women of “high faculties quiescent”), if they are fecund in long, poetic
dreams,--if life in Oldbridge does offer limitless advantage for the
building of castles in the air--none can deny that it has, too, its own
artless way of playing up to the leading lady.
“I wouldn't be left out for all the planets,” protested Ruth. “I'm
curious to know what the Oldbridge Industries are.”
“In that case----” answered her uncle.
He went off smiling, she could not conceive why.
“Miss Adgate was a sight for the gods,” vowed Rutherford. “Brown velvet,
sables, to suit her brown hair with a red glint in it, and eyes!”
Miss Adgate doubtless was a sight for the gods, when (conducted by
her uncle) she went the following evening to the Oldbridge Industrial
Exhibits. As she was led first by young Rutherford, then by young
Milman, then by young Massington, then by young Leffingwell, and then by
young Wetherby--through a crowd of friends, to every stall and counter
of the big illuminated hall,--as each of these young men explained,
volubly, minutely, each exhibit--little was left, we may believe, of
Oldbridge Industry which Ruth had not at the end fathomed, become well
acquainted with. Pausing at one stall and at another, she ordered with
reckless discrimination, rugs, lawnmowers, carpenter's tools, muslins,
silks, furniture; and a surfeit of glass blown by a little glass-blower
who had quite a local reputation for his designs; linens, too, and rugs
of delicate colour dyed and woven in the neighbourhood upon a hand-loom
a hundred years of age. The tools might do for Jobias. He had confided
to Paolina that his stock was getting rusty; the mowers, asked the
piratical salesman, are not lawnmowers forever getting out of order?
These, Ruth's purchases, she destined for the new wing. She was
furnishing the old Morris House, too. The Morris House General Adgate
had, to her joy, just presented her with. This had been the home of a
maternal greatgrandmother. From its portals, that lady with the patient
eyes (whose portrait, painted by one Jarvis, hung in the drawing-room)
having taken Admiral Richard Adgate for better or for worse under the
Puritan marriage service read by Parson Ebenezer Allsworthy,--that lady
had tripped across the hill to come and reign at Barracks Hill.
The Morris House! Miss Adgate destined it for her Summer overflow of
guests. It is is a quaint and picturesque spot, all nooks and cupboards,
within; of panelled walls and broad brick fireplaces. As its gardens
overlook the purling brook and the Wigwam, it was, thought she, well
suited to the purpose she intended--and it is in fact deserving of far
more attention that this passing word can say for it.