“’Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
Winter sped rapidly away to our friends at the Oaks, each day so full
of agreeable, useful employment and quiet pleasures, that they found
it all too short; time never hung heavy on their hands, ennui was
unknown to them.
No unusual or startling event marked the course of the weeks and
months. Mildred and Annis kept up a steady correspondence with mother
and sisters, and now and then the letters from Pleasant Plains seemed
to bring with them a touch of homesickness; but it would pass off
directly, leaving the victims as light-hearted and happy as before.
So, until Spring had fairly set in and they knew that April suns and
showers were bringing out the buds and leaves, and waking the flowers
in garden and woods even in their northern home; then, in spite of a
very strong affection for these relatives and kind entertainers, a
very sincere regret at the thought of parting from them, they were
seized with a great and unquenchable desire for home――home and
mother――they longed for all the dear ones, but mother most of all.
The business affair which had called Dr. Landreth South had now been
brought to a prosperous issue, and as there was no longer any
necessity for remaining, an early day was set for their departure.
The doctor and his wife, conversing together in the privacy of their
own apartments one bright sunshiny morning, had just settled this
question, when Annis came running in.
Mildred, with the brightest, happiest face she had worn for days, was
dandling little Percy on her knee, telling him between rapturous
kisses, “He shall go home to dear grandpa and grandma, so he shall,
the darling pet!”
“O Milly, are we going home soon?” cried Annis breathlessly.
“Yes; next week, your brother says.”
“If you think you can be ready by that time,” added the doctor.
“I!” exclaimed Annis, “I’d be ready in an hour if you and Milly would.
Oh, I’m so glad, so glad! I must run and tell Elsie.”
“And don’t you hope she will be as glad as you are?” asked the doctor
jocosely.
“Oh, it will be hard to leave Elsie!” she said, stopping short, with a
look of distress. “I wonder if we couldn’t persuade Cousin Horace to
let us take her along to spend the summer at our house.”
“Try it, Annis; there’s nothing like trying,” remarked the doctor with
mock gravity. “But I advise you to extend your invitation to him; or,
better still, to the whole family; you’ll have more chance of
success.”
“I wish they could and would all go with us,” Mildred said.
“So do I, my dear; but I know that it wouldn’t suit Dinsmore to be
absent from the plantation, just at present.”
“Then why did you advise me to invite him?” asked Annis in a piqued
tone.
“Because in my opinion one might as well ask for the gift of his
entire fortune as for leave to carry his little girl so far from him.”
“O Brother Charlie! didn’t father and mother let me come just as far
away from them? and to stay away just as long?”
“Really, I had not thought of that!” laughed the doctor. “Well, ask
Mr. Dinsmore; but if he says no, make allowance for the fact that he
has but one daughter, while your father and mother rejoice in a goodly
number.”
“I’ll go and do it this minute!” she exclaimed with energy and
determination. “But first I’ll invite them all; sha’n’t I, Milly?” she
asked, looking back from the doorway.
“Yes, tell them nothing could give greater pleasure to us or mother
and the rest at home.”
Running lightly down the broad stairway into the spacious hall below,
Annis heard a sound of cheerful voices, mingled with peals of merry
child laughter, coming from the veranda beyond.
The air was warm and balmy with the breath of flowers, and doors and
windows stood wide open, giving to the passer-by delightful glimpses
of the grounds lovely with the verdure and bloom of spring.
From the veranda the view was more extended, and thither the whole
family had betaken themselves for the full enjoyment of it, and of the
sweet, fresh air. Here Annis found them; Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore sitting
side by side, little Horace on his father’s knee, and Elsie romping
and playing with him, laughing merrily herself, and making him laugh,
while the parents looked on with pleased and happy faces.
“Ah, Annis, will you come and join us?” Mr. Dinsmore said, catching
sight of the little girl as she stepped from the open doorway.
“Thank you, Cousin Horace,” she returned, coming forward in eager
haste. “I have some news to tell.”
“Ah! then let us have it.”
Elsie stopped her romping, stood still, and turned to listen.
“It is that we are to start for home next week; and, O Cousin Horace,
we want to take you all with us!” and she concluded with Mildred’s
message.
The expression of Elsie’s face changed rapidly as Annis spoke; at
first it was full of regret at the prospect of losing her cousins’
companionship; then of pleasure at the thought of going with them.
“O papa, can we?” she asked eagerly.
“No, daughter; it would not suit me to leave home at present. But we
all thank you and Mildred very much for your kind invitation,” he
added to Annis, “and are very sorry to hear that we are to lose you so
soon.”
“Yes, Annis; ah, what shall I do without you!” exclaimed Elsie.
“Cousin Horace, I wish you could go and would,” said Annis; “but if
you can’t, you will let Cousin Rose and little Horace and Elsie go,
won’t you?”
“My dear,” he said, turning to his wife, “how would you like to go as
far as Philadelphia with them? Your mother has been very urgent of
late for a visit from you and the boy,” with a fatherly, smiling
glance at his little son, “and this would be an excellent
opportunity.”
“I should so much prefer to have you with me,” Rose answered with
hesitation.
“If you want to make a long visit your wisest course will be to go
without me,” he returned with a smile. “I will follow some weeks later
and bring you home.”
“I must take time to think of it,” she said. “And Elsie? You will let
me take her with me?”
“And let her go on with us?” put in Annis.
“I am inclined to think I should not risk much in leaving the decision
of both questions with her,” he said, with a tenderly, affectionate
glance into the sweet face of his little girl.
“Leave you, papa! to go so far away and stay so long?” she exclaimed,
springing to his side, and clasping her arms tight about his neck.
“Oh, no, no, no! never unless you make me do it!”
“Make you!” he said, holding her close to his heart with a low, happy
laugh, “I don’t know what could induce me to permit it. My wife’s
parents have some claim on her and their little grandson,” he added,
looking fondly at Rose, “but you, daughter, belong entirely to me, and
here you must stay while I do.”
She heard his verdict with a gleeful laugh, gave him another hug and
kiss, then turned to Annis, and putting her arms about her, “O Annis
dear!” she said in tremulous tones, the tears filling her eyes, “what
shall I do without you?”
“Look forward to another happy time together at some future day,”
suggested Mr. Dinsmore cheerily. “And now if you will don your
riding-habits, we will have a gallop. I have ordered the ponies and a
horse for myself, and they will be here very shortly.”
The little girls were both very fond of riding, and smiles banished
tears from their faces as they hastened to do his bidding.
He exerted himself, and with good success, through the few remaining
days of Annis’s stay, to keep them so busily and pleasantly employed
that there should be little time for the indulgence of vain regrets.
Rose was not long in deciding to avail herself of this good
opportunity to visit her parents, and as they made their preparations
for the journey, the heart of each proud young mother was full of fond
anticipations, of the delight she should feel in showing her lovely
baby boy to his grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
“They will hardly know Percy at home; he has grown and improved so
much!” Mildred said to her husband.
“Very much indeed! yet I think they will not be long in doubt of his
identity,” the doctor responded with a proud, loving glance, from wife
to son and back again; “he has his mother’s eyes and smile.”
When the appointed day came it found all in readiness for the journey.
Mr. Dinsmore and Elsie accompanied the travellers to the city, saw
them on board the train and took leave of them there.
“O papa!” Elsie said, sobbing on his breast as they drove homeward,
“partings are so dreadful!――partings from those you love and don’t
expect to see again for a long, long while.”
“Yes, darling; I feel them to be so myself, and I know it must be
harder still for a little one like you with such a loving, tender
heart,” he answered, soothing her with caresses.
“How selfish I am, dear papa!” she exclaimed, lifting her head to look
into his face, and noting its sad expression, “how thoughtless to
forget how hard it must be for you to see mamma and little brother go
away.”
“Selfishness is quite foreign to your nature, I think, dear daughter,”
he returned, “and though I do feel keenly the parting from those dear
ones, the weeks of separation cannot look nearly so long to me as they
do to one of your age. But we will look forward to the happy meeting
we hope for at the end of those weeks. And we have each other still,”
he added with a cheery smile. “Should not that be enough to make us at
least tolerably happy?”
“Oh, yes! dear, dear papa! How much worse to be parted from you than
from all the rest of the world! I will not cry any more,” she said
with determination, wiping away her tears and smiling sweetly into the
eyes that were gazing so fondly into hers.
She kept her word, exerting herself to be cheerful and to win her
father from sad thoughts by loving caresses and sweet, innocent
prattle.
He seconded her efforts, and before they reached home they were
laughing and jesting right merrily.
But as they crossed the threshold she said with quivering lip and
tremulous voice, “Papa, how very lonely it seems! and it will be still
more so in my own room; without Annis and away from you.”
“Then suppose you spend all your time with me.”
“Oh, may I!” she asked, looking up delightedly into his face.
“Every moment from the time you are dressed in the morning till you
retire at night. That is, if you wish it, and can contrive to learn
your lessons by my side in the hours when I am indoors. In that case
you may go with me when and wherever I go.”
“Oh, how nice, dear papa!” she cried, clapping her hands and dancing
about in her delight.
“Yes,” he said, sitting down and taking her in his arms to pet and
fondle her. “I think we shall be very happy together even without any
one to help us enjoy ourselves. We were in former days, were we not,
darling?”
“Yes, indeed, papa! when we first came to this sweet home, and each of
us was all the other had. Let us pretend we’ve gone back to those old
times just for a little while. Wouldn’t it be a nice variety?”
“It seemed a very nice variety then, and you may pretend it as
strongly as you please,” he said, with an amused, indulgent smile.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Note
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations
were added. Duplicate words at line endings or page breaks were
removed. Misspelled words were not corrected. A few quotation marks
and apostrophes were adjusted to current usage.