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The younger man might have been eighteen or twenty. Ben was waiting on the door. He announced "Mr. Bounett and Mr. Eugene Bounett." "We hardly expected to find any of the gentlemen at home," began the elder guest. "We are cousins, in a fashion, and my son has met the doctor " "Father is at home," said Margaret in the pause. "Hanny, run down-stairs and call him."
It had quite a country aspect then; but there were beautiful drives, and Greenwood Cemetery had already some extremely handsome monuments. There was something about Eva Bounett that suggested Lily Ludlow, and kept Hanny from liking her cordially. She laughed at so many things, made fun of them; and Hanny wondered if she was criticising her, and would laugh at her when she returned home.
Hanny used to think how queer the city must have been in seventeen hundred, when people had a black servant to carry the lantern so one could see to get about. She knew so much of the early history now, the Dutch reign and the British reign and the close of the war. Old Mr. Bounett looked like a picture in his handsome, old-fashioned attire; and he just seemed asleep.
"But I don't know what they will do with Eva. My half-sister, Luella, was just such a noisy harum-scarum; but she had only boys to play with. Now, she is getting to be a nice lady-like girl." Hanny recalled two visits in Hammersley Street when Luella had kept her in a fright all the time. They went to church Sunday morning, and heard Helen Bounett sing. It was very fine and moving.
Francesca was married in the Livingston family and lived up in Manhattanville. How any one could bear to be out of the city that meant below Tenth Street he couldn't see! "Is that little fairy your sister?" he asked. "Isn't she lovely!" Margaret smiled. She thought Mr. Eugene very flattering. Then the others came out, and Mr. Bounett took a cup of black coffee and a very dainty sandwich.
The little rise of ground between this and the Hudson shut out the river; but it could not shut out the amethystine splendour. Back of it all was heaven, to the child's faith. Miss Lois and her sister were there, and old Mr. Bounett, and the poet's young wife, and ever so many others. It was only the other side of the clouds, with their scarlet and gold and green battlements.
The little girl could climb trees and walk out to the ends of the limbs and jump; she had swung her arms and said one, two, three, and gone flying over the creek without falling in; she could do "vinegar" with a skipping rope; she could walk the edge of the curb-stone without tilting over; she could swing ever so high and not wink; she wasn't afraid to go up stairs in the dark; but when the elephant took the first long, rocking step, she felt something as she had when Luella Bounett had run downstairs with her in her arms.
Grandfather Bounett, who had been very feeble of late, had died. Hanny had seen him a number of times since her memorable introductory visit. Luella had been sent to boarding-school, and was quite toned down, was indeed a young lady. Doctor Joe had made frequent visits, and the old gentleman had told him many striking incidents of his life.
Bounett's father had come to New York a young man seventy odd years ago. Mr. Bounett himself had married for his first wife a Miss Vermilye, whose mother had been an Underhill from White Plains. And she was Father Underhill's own cousin. She had been dead more than twenty years, and her children, five living ones, were all married and settled about, and he had five by his second marriage.
There were so many other friends, the Bounett cousins, and Dele Whitney, who was just as jolly as ever, with the old aunts down in Beach Street, and who declared the little girl was the sweetest thing in the world, and that some day she should just steal her, and carry her off to fairyland. There came to New York in May a menagerie.
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