Deephaven | Page 7

tell you that once in the summer two
Cambridge girls who were spending a week with us unwisely enticed
us into giving some thrilling recitals, which nearly frightened them out
of their wits, and Kate and I were finally in terror ourselves. We had all
been on the sofa in the dark, singing and talking, and were waiting in
great suspense after I had finished one of such particular horror that I
declared it should be the last, when we heard footsteps on the hall stairs.
There were lights in the dining-room which shone faintly through the
half-closed door, and we saw something white and shapeless come
slowly down, and clutched each other's gowns in agony. It was only
Kate's dog, who came in and laid his head in her lap and slept
peacefully. We thought we could not sleep a wink after this, and I
bravely went alone out to the light to see my watch, and, finding it was
past twelve, we concluded to sit up all night and to go down to the
shore at sunrise, it would be so much easier than getting up early some
morning. We had been out rowing and had taken a long walk the day
before, and were obliged to dance and make other slight exertions to

keep ourselves awake at one time. We lunched at two, and I never shall
forget the sunrise that morning; but we were singularly quiet and
abstracted that day, and indeed for several days after Deephaven was "a
land in which it seemed always afternoon," we breakfasted so late.
As Mrs. Kew had said, there was "a power of china." Kate and I were
convinced that the lives of her grandmothers must have been spent in
giving tea-parties. We counted ten sets of cups, beside quantities of
stray ones; and some member of the family had evidently devoted her
time to making a collection of pitchers.
There was an escritoire in Miss Brandon's own room, which we looked
over one day. There was a little package of letters; ship letters mostly,
tied with a very pale and tired-looking blue ribbon. They were in a
drawer with a locket holding a faded miniature on ivory and a lock of
brown hair, and there were also some dry twigs and bits of leaf which
had long ago been bright wild-roses, such as still bloom among the
Deephaven rocks. Kate said that she had often heard her mother
wonder why her aunt never had cared to marry, for she had chances
enough doubtless, and had been rich and handsome and finely educated.
So there was a sailor lover after all, and perhaps he had been lost at sea
and she faithfully kept the secret, never mourning outwardly. "And I
always thought her the most matter-of-fact old lady," said Kate; "yet
here's her romance, after all." We put the letters outside on a chair to
read, but afterwards carefully replaced them, without untying them. I'm
glad we did. There were other letters which we did read, and which
interested us very much,--letters from her girl friends written in the
boarding-school vacations, and just after she finished school. Those in
one of the smaller packages were charming; it must have been such a
bright, nice girl who wrote them! They were very few, and were tied
with black ribbon, and marked on the outside in girlish writing: "My
dearest friend, Dolly McAllister, died September 3, 1809, aged
eighteen." The ribbon had evidently been untied and the letters read
many times. One began: "My dear, delightful Kitten: I am quite
overjoyed to find my father has business which will force him to go to
Deephaven next week, and he kindly says if there be no more rain I
may ride with him to see you. I will surely come, for if there is danger

of spattering my gown, and he bids me stay at home, I shall go
galloping after him and overtake him when it is too late to send me
back. I have so much to tell you." I wish I knew more about the visit.
Poor Miss Katharine! it made us sad to look over these treasures of her
girlhood. There were her compositions and exercise-books; some
samplers and queer little keepsakes; withered flowers and some pebbles
and other things of like value, with which there was probably some
pleasant association. "Only think of her keeping them all her days,"
said I to Kate. "I am continually throwing some relic of the kind away,
because I forget why I have it!"
There was a box in the lower part which Kate was glad to find, for she
had heard her mother wonder if some such things were not in existence.
It held a crucifix and a mass-book and some rosaries,