One evening the doctor had been over to the cottage, superintending
the arrangement of some furniture. On his return home, a servant
brought a packet of letters and papers. Glancing over one of them, he
said:
"Elizabeth, my daughter."
A prim young lady, in a high-necked dress, and a close-fitting black
net cap, looked up from her work and answered in a low, formal voice:
"My father."
"Your aunt and cousin have at length arrived at the port of Baltimore.
They came over in the _Walter Raleigh_. I wish you to be in readiness
to accompany me to-morrow when I go to bring them down."
"My father, yes," were the only words that escaped the formal and
frozen girl.
A week after this conversation the still life of the beautiful
cottage was enlivened. A lovely boy played before the door, while a
pale mother watched him from within. That pale mother was not yet
thirty years of age, yet her cheeks were sunken, her eyes dim, and her
hair streaked with silver. Truly, the face was breaking fast, but the
heart was breaking faster. But the boy! Oh, he was a noble child! Tall
for his age (he was but five years old), his dark hair, parted over a
high, broad forehead, fell in sable curls upon his shoulders; his
large black eyes, now keen and piercing as the young eagle's, now soft
and melting as the dove's.
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