Mildred's Married Life and a Winter with Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXVI.

“’Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

WINTER sped rapidly away to our friends at the Oaks, each day so full of agreeable, useful employment and quiet pleasures, that they found it all too short; time never hung heavy on their hands, ennui was unknown to them.

No unusual or startling event marked the course of the weeks and months. Mildred and Annis kept up a steady correspondence with mother and sisters, and now and then the letters from Pleasant Plains seemed to bring with them a touch of homesickness; but it would pass off directly, leaving the victims as light-hearted and happy as before.

So, until Spring had fairly set in and they knew that April suns and showers were bringing out the buds and leaves, and waking the flowers in garden and woods even in their northern home; then, in spite of a very strong affection for these relatives and kind entertainers, a very sincere regret at the thought of parting from them, they were seized with a great and unquenchable desire for home—​home and mother—​they longed for all the dear ones, but mother most of all.

The business affair which had called Dr. Landreth South had now been brought to a prosperous issue, and as there was no longer any necessity for remaining, an early day was set for their departure.

The doctor and his wife, conversing together in the privacy of their own apartments one bright sunshiny morning, had just settled this question, when Annis came running in.

Mildred, with the brightest, happiest face she had worn for days, was dandling little Percy on her knee, telling him between rapturous kisses, “He shall go home to dear grandpa and grandma, so he shall, the darling pet!”

“O Milly, are we going home soon?” cried Annis breathlessly.

“Yes; next week, your brother says.”

“If you think you can be ready by that time,” added the doctor.

“I!” exclaimed Annis, “I’d be ready in an hour if you and Milly would. Oh, I’m so glad, so glad! I must run and tell Elsie.”

“And don’t you hope she will be as glad as you are?” asked the doctor jocosely.

“Oh, it will be hard to leave Elsie!” she said, stopping short, with a look of distress. “I wonder if we couldn’t persuade Cousin Horace to let us take her along to spend the summer at our house.”

“Try it, Annis; there’s nothing like trying,” remarked the doctor with mock gravity. “But I advise you to extend your invitation to him; or, better still, to the whole family; you’ll have more chance of success.”

“I wish they could and would all go with us,” Mildred said.

“So do I, my dear; but I know that it wouldn’t suit Dinsmore to be absent from the plantation, just at present.”

“Then why did you advise me to invite him?” asked Annis in a piqued tone.

“Because in my opinion one might as well ask for the gift of his entire fortune as for leave to carry his little girl so far from him.”

“O Brother Charlie! didn’t father and mother let me come just as far away from them? and to stay away just as long?”

“Really, I had not thought of that!” laughed the doctor. “Well, ask Mr. Dinsmore; but if he says no, make allowance for the fact that he has but one daughter, while your father and mother rejoice in a goodly number.”

“I’ll go and do it this minute!” she exclaimed with energy and determination. “But first I’ll invite them all; sha’n’t I, Milly?” she asked, looking back from the doorway.

“Yes, tell them nothing could give greater pleasure to us or mother and the rest at home.”

Running lightly down the broad stairway into the spacious hall below, Annis heard a sound of cheerful voices, mingled with peals of merry child laughter, coming from the veranda beyond.

The air was warm and balmy with the breath of flowers, and doors and windows stood wide open, giving to the passer-by delightful glimpses of the grounds lovely with the verdure and bloom of spring.

From the veranda the view was more extended, and thither the whole family had betaken themselves for the full enjoyment of it, and of the sweet, fresh air. Here Annis found them; Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore sitting side by side, little Horace on his father’s knee, and Elsie romping and playing with him, laughing merrily herself, and making him laugh, while the parents looked on with pleased and happy faces.

“Ah, Annis, will you come and join us?” Mr. Dinsmore said, catching sight of the little girl as she stepped from the open doorway.

“Thank you, Cousin Horace,” she returned, coming forward in eager haste. “I have some news to tell.”

“Ah! then let us have it.”

Elsie stopped her romping, stood still, and turned to listen.

“It is that we are to start for home next week; and, O Cousin Horace, we want to take you all with us!” and she concluded with Mildred’s message.

The expression of Elsie’s face changed rapidly as Annis spoke; at first it was full of regret at the prospect of losing her cousins’ companionship; then of pleasure at the thought of going with them.

“O papa, can we?” she asked eagerly.

“No, daughter; it would not suit me to leave home at present. But we all thank you and Mildred very much for your kind invitation,” he added to Annis, “and are very sorry to hear that we are to lose you so soon.”

“Yes, Annis; ah, what shall I do without you!” exclaimed Elsie.

“Cousin Horace, I wish you could go and would,” said Annis; “but if you can’t, you will let Cousin Rose and little Horace and Elsie go, won’t you?”

“My dear,” he said, turning to his wife, “how would you like to go as far as Philadelphia with them? Your mother has been very urgent of late for a visit from you and the boy,” with a fatherly, smiling glance at his little son, “and this would be an excellent opportunity.”

“I should so much prefer to have you with me,” Rose answered with hesitation.

“If you want to make a long visit your wisest course will be to go without me,” he returned with a smile. “I will follow some weeks later and bring you home.”

“I must take time to think of it,” she said. “And Elsie? You will let me take her with me?”

“And let her go on with us?” put in Annis.

“I am inclined to think I should not risk much in leaving the decision of both questions with her,” he said, with a tenderly, affectionate glance into the sweet face of his little girl.

“Leave you, papa! to go so far away and stay so long?” she exclaimed, springing to his side, and clasping her arms tight about his neck. “Oh, no, no, no! never unless you make me do it!”

“Make you!” he said, holding her close to his heart with a low, happy laugh, “I don’t know what could induce me to permit it. My wife’s parents have some claim on her and their little grandson,” he added, looking fondly at Rose, “but you, daughter, belong entirely to me, and here you must stay while I do.”

She heard his verdict with a gleeful laugh, gave him another hug and kiss, then turned to Annis, and putting her arms about her, “O Annis dear!” she said in tremulous tones, the tears filling her eyes, “what shall I do without you?”

“Look forward to another happy time together at some future day,” suggested Mr. Dinsmore cheerily. “And now if you will don your riding-habits, we will have a gallop. I have ordered the ponies and a horse for myself, and they will be here very shortly.”

The little girls were both very fond of riding, and smiles banished tears from their faces as they hastened to do his bidding.

He exerted himself, and with good success, through the few remaining days of Annis’s stay, to keep them so busily and pleasantly employed that there should be little time for the indulgence of vain regrets.

Rose was not long in deciding to avail herself of this good opportunity to visit her parents, and as they made their preparations for the journey, the heart of each proud young mother was full of fond anticipations, of the delight she should feel in showing her lovely baby boy to his grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

“They will hardly know Percy at home; he has grown and improved so much!” Mildred said to her husband.

“Very much indeed! yet I think they will not be long in doubt of his identity,” the doctor responded with a proud, loving glance, from wife to son and back again; “he has his mother’s eyes and smile.”

When the appointed day came it found all in readiness for the journey.

Mr. Dinsmore and Elsie accompanied the travellers to the city, saw them on board the train and took leave of them there.

“O papa!” Elsie said, sobbing on his breast as they drove homeward, “partings are so dreadful!—​partings from those you love and don’t expect to see again for a long, long while.”

“Yes, darling; I feel them to be so myself, and I know it must be harder still for a little one like you with such a loving, tender heart,” he answered, soothing her with caresses.

“How selfish I am, dear papa!” she exclaimed, lifting her head to look into his face, and noting its sad expression, “how thoughtless to forget how hard it must be for you to see mamma and little brother go away.”

“Selfishness is quite foreign to your nature, I think, dear daughter,” he returned, “and though I do feel keenly the parting from those dear ones, the weeks of separation cannot look nearly so long to me as they do to one of your age. But we will look forward to the happy meeting we hope for at the end of those weeks. And we have each other still,” he added with a cheery smile. “Should not that be enough to make us at least tolerably happy?”

“Oh, yes! dear, dear papa! How much worse to be parted from you than from all the rest of the world! I will not cry any more,” she said with determination, wiping away her tears and smiling sweetly into the eyes that were gazing so fondly into hers.

She kept her word, exerting herself to be cheerful and to win her father from sad thoughts by loving caresses and sweet, innocent prattle.

He seconded her efforts, and before they reached home they were laughing and jesting right merrily.

But as they crossed the threshold she said with quivering lip and tremulous voice, “Papa, how very lonely it seems! and it will be still more so in my own room; without Annis and away from you.”

“Then suppose you spend all your time with me.”

“Oh, may I!” she asked, looking up delightedly into his face.

“Every moment from the time you are dressed in the morning till you retire at night. That is, if you wish it, and can contrive to learn your lessons by my side in the hours when I am indoors. In that case you may go with me when and wherever I go.”

“Oh, how nice, dear papa!” she cried, clapping her hands and dancing about in her delight.

“Yes,” he said, sitting down and taking her in his arms to pet and fondle her. “I think we shall be very happy together even without any one to help us enjoy ourselves. We were in former days, were we not, darling?”

“Yes, indeed, papa! when we first came to this sweet home, and each of us was all the other had. Let us pretend we’ve gone back to those old times just for a little while. Wouldn’t it be a nice variety?”

“It seemed a very nice variety then, and you may pretend it as strongly as you please,” he said, with an amused, indulgent smile.

THE END.