CHAPTER XXIV.

THE OLD PENNSYLVANIA MANSION.

The Bosworths lived behind the spur of the mountain which shut out a portion of the valley from our house by its crown of forest-trees. I had taken little exercise in the open air of late, for Mrs. Dennison monopolized the horse I had been in the habit of riding, with my usual seat in the carriage. Perhaps I felt a little hurt at this, and would not ask favors that had until now been mine without solicitation. In my love of out-door exercise I am half an English woman. So, mentioning to Mrs. Lee and Jessie that I was going out for a long walk across the fields, I started for Mrs. Bosworth's house.

It was a splendid afternoon. The sunshine, warm and golden, without being oppressive, was softened by transparent clouds that drifted like currents and waves of gauze athwart the sky. The meadows were full of daisies, buttercups, and crimson clover, through which the blue-flies and bumble-bees fluttered and hummed their drowsy music. In the pastures clouds of grasshoppers sprang up, with a whir, from the clusters of white everlasting that sprinkled the slopes like a snow-storm; and little birds bent down the stately mullein-stalks with their weight, and sang cheerily after me from the crooks of the fences.

How I loved these little creatures with their bright eyes and graceful ways! How quietly they opened my heart to those sweet impulses that make one grateful and child-like! My step grew buoyant, and I felt a cool, fresh color mounting to my cheeks. The walk had done me good. I had been too much in the house, indulging in strange fancies that were calculated to make no one happy, and were, perhaps, unjust. How could I have sunk into this state of mind? Was I jealous of Mrs. Dennison? Yes, possibly! But not as another would have understood the feeling. It was rather hard to hear the whole household singing her praises from morning till night; and Jessie, my own Jessie, seemed so bound up in the woman.

Well, after all, these things seemed much more important in the house, where I felt like an involuntary prisoner, than they appeared to me, with the open fields breathing fragrance around me, and the blue skies speaking beautifully of the beneficent God who reigned above them.

I really think the birds in that neighborhood had learned to love me a little, they gave such quaint little looks, and burst into such volumes of song among the hazel-bushes as I passed. Before I knew it, fragments of melodies were on my own lips. I gathered handful after handful of the meadow-flowers, grouping the choicest into bouquets, and scattering the rest along my path. Thus you might have tracked my progress by tufts of grass, and golden lilies, as the little boy in fairy history was traced by the pebble-stones he dropped.

Mrs. Bosworth's house was one of the oldest and finest of those ponderous Dutch mansions that are scattered over Pennsylvania. There were rich lands to back that old-fashioned building, and any amount of invested property, independent of the lands. After all, young Bosworth was no contemptible match for our Jessie, even in a worldly point of view. If his residence lacked something of the elegance and modern appointments for which ours was remarkable, it had an aspect of age and affluence quite as imposing. Indeed, in some respects it possessed advantages which our house could not boast.

Majestic trees that struck their roots in a virgin soil, and shrubbery that had grown almost into trees, surrounded the old house. One great, white lilac-bush lifted itself above the second-story windows, and old-fashioned white roses clambered half over the stone front. Then there was a huge honeysuckle that spread itself like a banner upon one corner, garlanding the eaves, and dropping down in rich festoons from the roof itself.

But all this was nothing compared to that magnificent elm-tree, which overhung a wing of the building with its tent-like branches, through which the wind was eternally whispering, and the sunshine was broken into faint flashes before it reached the roof. I had never been so much impressed with the dignity of old times, as when I approached this dwelling. It possessed all the respectability of a family mansion, growing antique in the prosperity which surrounded it, without any attempt at modern improvements.

The very flowers on the premises were old-fashioned; great snow-ball bushes and rows of fruit-trees predominating. In the square garden, with its pointed picket-fence, that ran along the road, I saw clusters of smallage, and thickets of delicate fennel. On each side the broad threshold-stone stood green boxes running over with live-forever and house-leeks, while all around the lower edges of the stone foundation that exquisite velvet moss, which we oftenest find on old houses, was creeping.

I lifted the heavy brass knocker very cautiously, for it was ponderous enough to have reverberated through the house. Even the light blow I gave frightened me. No wonder people felt constrained to muffle knockers like that in the good old times, when sickness came to the family.

A quiet, middle-aged colored woman came to the door. She knew me at once, though it was the first time I had entered the house in years.

"Come in, Miss Hyde," she said, welcoming me with a genial look. "Mrs. Bosworth said, if you called she would come right straight down and see you; so walk in."

She opened the door of a sitting-room on the right of the hall. It was old-fashioned like the exterior of the building. Windows sunk deep into the wall, ponderous chairs, and a capacious, high-backed sofa with crimson cushions, and embroidered footstools standing before it,--all had an air of comfortable ease. The carpet had been very rich in its time, and harmonized well with the rest of the apartment.