Elinor Wyllys, vol 2 | Page 7

Charlie, with some indignation. "Well, the course of true love never has, and never will run quite as it ought, I suppose. And how do all the Longbridge people come on?--How is Uncle Josie?"
"Very well, indeed; just as good as ever to us. You must go to see him to-morrow."
"Certainly;--and what is Uncle Dozie about?"
"At work in the vegetable-garden, as usual. He sent me a fine basket of salad, and radishes, and onions, this morning."
"Clapp has got into a new house I see."
"Yes; he is in very good business, I believe; you saw Catherine, you say?"
"Yes, for a minute only. I ran in to kiss Kate and the children, while they were harnessing a horse for me at the tavern. Kate looks very well herself. The children didn't remember much of Uncle Charlie; but they are pretty, healthy little things, nevertheless."
The grandmother assented to the commendation of her daughter's family; she thought them remarkably fine children. "Catherine was a very fortunate woman," she said; "Mr. Clapp was a very superior man, so very clever that he must do well; and the children were all healthy--they had gone through the measles wonderfully, that spring."
Charlie had not quite as elevated an opinion of his brother-in-law as the females of the family; he allowed his mother's remark to pass unnoticed, however.
"And so Mr. Taylor has given up Colonnade Manor," he continued.
"Yes; he has just sold it to Mr. de Vaux, a friend of Mr. Wyllys," replied Miss Patsey.
"Why did he sell it, pray?"
"Well, the young ladies liked better to live about at hotels and boarding-houses in the summer, I believe; they thought it was too dull at Longbridge. Mr. Taylor didn't care much for the place: you know there are some people, who, as soon as they have built a house, and got everything in nice order, want to sell; it seems as if they did not care to be comfortable; but I suppose it is only because they are so fond of change."
We may as well observe, by way of parenthesis, that this fancy of getting rid of a place as soon as it is in fine order, would probably never occur to any man but an American, and an American of the particular variety to which Mr. Taylor belonged.
"I don't wonder at his wanting to get rid of the house; but the situation and the neighbourhood might have satisfied him, I think," said Charlie, as he accepted Miss Patsey's invitation to eat the nice supper she had prepared for him.
As he took his seat at the table, Mrs. Hubbard observed, that he probably had not seen such short-cake as Patsey made, in Rome--to which Charlie assented warmly. He had wished one evening, in Florence, he said, for some of his sister's short-cake, and a good cup of tea of her making; and the same night he dreamed that the Venus de Medicis had made him some. He was ashamed of himself for having had such a dream; but it could not be helped, such was the fact.
{"Venus de Medicis" = Famous nude statue of the Goddess Venus--a 1st Century BC copy of a lost Greek statue by Cleomenes of Athens--in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence}
Mrs. Hubbard thought no woman, Venus or not, ought to be ashamed of making good short-cake; if they were bad, that would be a different matter.
"Well, Charlie, now you have seen all those paintings and figures you used to talk so much about, what do you think of them?--are they really so handsome as you expected?" asked his sister.
"They are wonderful!" exclaimed Charlie, with animation; putting down a short-cake he had just buttered. "Wonderful!--There is no other word to describe them."
Mrs. Hubbard observed, that she had some notion of a painting, from the minister's portrait in the parlour--Charlie took up his short cake--she thought a person might have satisfaction in a painting; such a picture as that portrait; but as for those stone figures he used to wish to see, she could not understand what was the beauty of such idol-like things.
"They are not at all like idols, mother; they are the most noble conceptions of the human form."
How could they look human? He himself had told her they were made out of marble; just such marble, she supposed, as was used for tomb-stones.
"I only wish you could see some of the statues in Italy; the Laocoon, Niobe, and others I have seen. I think you would feel then what I felt--what I never can describe in words."
{"Laocoon" = A famous Greek statue, in the Vatican at Rome, of a Trojan priest and his two sons being crushed by serpents. "Niobe" = a famous statue, in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (a Roman copy of a lost Greek original attributed to Scopas), of Niobe -- in Greek