Elinor Wyllys, vol 2 | Page 5

That is Dr. Van Horne, driving off in his
professional sulkey. There are Mrs. Tibbs and Mrs. Bibbs, side-by-side,
as of old. Mrs. George Wyllys has moved, it seems; her children are
evidently at home in a door-yard on the opposite side of the street,
adjoining the Hubbard "Park." On the door of that bright-coloured,
spruce-looking brick house, you will see the name of W. C. Clapp; and
there are a pair of boots resting on the window-sill of an adjoining
office, which probably belong to the person of the lawyer, himself.
Now, we may observe Mrs. Hilson and Miss Emmeline Hubbard
flitting across the street, "fascinating and aristocratic" as ever.
{"sulkey" = light two-wheeled carriage, seated for one person; usually

spelled "sulky"}
Let us leave the village, however, for the more immediate
neighbourhood of Wyllys-Roof; in which, it is hoped, the reader will
feel more particularly interested. There stands the little cottage of the
Hubbards, looking just as it did three years since; it is possible that one
or two of the bull's-eye panes of glass may have been broken, and
changed, and the grey shingles are a little more moss-grown; but its
general aspect is precisely what it was when we were last there. The
snow-ball and the sweet-briar are in their old places, each side of the
humble porch; the white blossoms have fallen from the scraggy
branches of the snow-ball, this first week in June; the fresh pink buds
are opening on the fragrant young shoots of the sweet-briar. There is
our friend, Miss Patsey, wearing a sun-bonnet, at work in the garden;
and if you look through the open door of the house, you will see
beyond the passage into the neat little kitchen, where we catch a
glimpse of Mrs. Hubbard's white cap over the back of her rocking-chair.
It is possible that you may also see the merry, shining, black face of a
little handmaiden, whom Miss Patsey has lately taken into the family;
and, as the tea-kettle is boiling, and the day's work chiefly over, the
little thing is often seen at this hour, playing about the corners of the
house, with the old cat. Ah, there is the little minx!--her sharp ears have
heard the sound of wheels, and she is already at the open gate, to see
what passes. A wagon stops; whom have we here? Little Judy is
frightened half out of her wits: a young man she does not know, with
his face covered with beard, after a fashion she had never yet seen,
springs from the wagon. Miss Patsey turns to look.
"Charlie!"--she exclaims; and in another moment the youth has
received the joyful, tearful, agitated embrace of his mother and sister.
The darling of their hearts is at home again; three years since, he left
them, a boy, to meet dangers exaggerated tenfold by their anxious
hearts; he returns, a man, who has faced temptations undreamed of by
their simple minds. The wanderer is once more beneath their humble
roof; their partial eyes rest again on that young face, changed, yet still
the same.
Charlie finds the three last years have passed lightly over his mother
and his sister; theirs are the same kindly faces, the same well-known
voices, the best loved, the most trusted from childhood. After the first

eager moments of greeting are over, and the first hurried questions have
been answered, he looks about him. Has not the dear old cottage shrunk
to a very nut-shell? He opens the door of the school-room; there are its
two benches, and its humble official desk, as of old; he looks into the
little parlour, and smiles to think of the respect he felt in his childish
days for Miss Patsey's drawing-room: many a gilded gallery, many a
brilliant saloon has he since entered as a sight-seer, with a more
careless step. He goes out on the porch; is it possible that is the
garden?--why it is no larger than a table-cloth!--he should have thought
the beds he had so often weeded could not be so small: and the
door-yard, one can shake hands across it! And there is Wyllys-Roof,
half hid by trees--he used to admire it as a most venerable pile; in
reality it is only a plain, respectable country-house: as the home of the
Wyllyses, however, it must always be an honoured spot to him.
Colonnade Manor too--he laughs! There are some buildings that seem,
at first sight, to excite to irresistible merriment; they belong to what
may he called the "ridiculous order" of architecture, and consist
generally of caricatures on noble Greek models; Mr. Taylor's elegant
mansion had, undeniably, a claim to a conspicuous place among the
number. Charlie looks with a painter's eye at the country; the scenery is
of the simplest kind,