Rich Enough | Page 8

her sister to become the 'Lady of the Lake.'"
The matter was soon decided; the sisters visited the place, and were enchanted with it; and Howard was authorized by his brother to make the purchase.
The house had been built many years. It was irregular in its form, and certainly belonged to no particular order of architecture. There was a large dining-room, and doors that opened upon the green, and plenty of small rooms; in short, it was just such a house as Frances fancied; it was picturesque, and looked, she said, "as if it had grown and shot out here and there like the old oaks around it."
Charlotte begged that on herself might devolve the care of furnishing it. "I know better than you," said she, "what will save trouble. Banish brass and mahogany; admit nothing that requires daily labor to make it fine and showy. I do not despair of setting you up a dairy, and teaching you to churn your own butter." She truly loved and honored her sister-in- law, and trembled for her life, which she was persuaded she held by a frail tenure. She was eager to prevent her returning to the city during the warm season, and readily undertook to go herself and make all necessary arrangements. Frances furnished her with a list, and left much discretionary power to her agent.
In the course of a few days she returned.--"We must be at Clyde Farm to- morrow," said she, "to receive the goods and chattels of which I am only the precursor. Your husband enters warmly into the furnishing of your country residence, and therefore we must let him have a voice in it. His taste is not so simple as ours, so we must admit some of the finery of the town house; pier and chimney glasses are to be sent from it. I did not make much opposition to this, for they will not only reflect our rustic figures within, but the trees and grass without. How I long to have haying-time come! You must ride from the fields with your children, as I do, on a load of hay, when the work of the day is over, and look down upon all the world. O Frances," added she, "if we could only persuade your husband to turn farmer, our victory would be complete."
"It will never be," said Frances.
"I don't know that," replied Charlotte; "he seemed to set very little value on the city residence, and would fain have stripped his elegant rooms to dignify your rustic retreat; but I would not consent to the migration of a particle of gilding or damask, but told him he might send the marble slabs, with the mirrors,--and I speak for one of the slabs for the dairy. But I have been more thoughtful for you than you have for yourself: look at this list of books that I have ordered."
Frances was surprised; she had never seen Charlotte with a book in her hand, and she candidly expressed her astonishment that, amidst all her hurry, she had remembered books.
"Where do you think I acquired all my knowledge," said Charlotte, "if I never open a book? But you are half right; I certainly do not patronize book-making; and yet all summer I am reading the book of Nature. I open it with the first snow-drop and crocus which peeps from under her white robe; and then, when she puts on her green mantle, strewed with
'The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose,'
I study the lilies of the field. Depend upon it, there is more wisdom without doors than we can find within,--more wisdom there than in books."
"I believe it," said Frances; "all nature speaks of the Creator,--of the one great Mind which formed this endless variety, and can give life to the most insignificant flower that grows by the way-side."
"I should like to know what flower you call insignificant," said Charlotte; "not this little houstonia, I hope; that has a perfection of organization in which many of your splendid green-house flowers are deficient. But that is the way with us: we call those things sublime which are on a large scale, because they are magnified to our narrow minds, and we can comprehend them without any trouble.--But I must not display all my wisdom to you at once--how, like Solomon of old, I can speak of trees, from 'the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.'--And now, fair sister,
'Up, up, and quit your books,'
and come with me to one of my studios--namely, my poultry-yard. I hear the bipeds clamorous for their supper."
"This is the woman," thought Frances, "that I have sometimes wondered Howard, with his reflecting mind, could select as his partner for life! Because I saw her, like the Deity she