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This time a voice answered to his knock. He opened the door. The room contained no article of furniture. In one corner lay some rags, and on the mantel-piece stood a tin teapot, two cups, and a plate. There was no fire, but a few pieces of wood lay near the hearth, and at the bottom of the open cupboard remained a very small supply of coals.
Bodine's simple meal was over, and after having had a fire lighted on the parlor hearth, she had ensconced herself in a low rocking-chair in readiness to receive her guests. There was a sort of stately cordiality in the meeting between her and Mrs. Hunter, quiet courtesy on the part of Captain Bodine toward all, while honest Ella could not banish a slight constraint from her manner.
Fatal activity! Hilary's pet cat, startled from sleep on the kitchen hearth, at the same instant ran wildly up stairs; there was a start a stumble and then down came the candle, the ewer, Elizabeth, and all. It was an awful crash. It brought every member of the family to see what was the matter. "What has the girl broken?" cried Selina. "Where has she hurt herself?" anxiously added Johanna.
"No," replied Mother Darkmans, "I seed him go out an hour agone, when the sun was just on the rise; and I said, when I seed him stroam into the wood yonder, and the ould leaves splashed in the damp under his feet, and his hat was aboon his brows, and his lips went so, I said, says I, 't is not the man that will make a hearth bright that would walk thus on his marriage day.
Kate was here concocting a savoury and an entrée and two or three other things for his dinner, for she had packed the depressed and depressing Ellen off to the bakers' picnic with Anna from "Greenways" and was sole mistress of her hearth and home for the day.
Then with an awful light flashing into his burning eyes, and a cry which rang through the whole building, he threw up his arms and fell like a log across the hearth rug. Every one sprang up and crowded round him, but the physician pushed his way through the group and fell on his knees. He was up again in a moment, looking very pale and awed.
It need not be supposed that I hesitated long about becoming the Rittmeister's successor; and so I drew the chair to the table, and the table nearer to the fire, for, singularly enough, the embers of a wood fire still slumbered on the hearth.
No doubt the Briton maintains that it is all in defence of Queen and country, hearth and home. An excellent reason, of course!
Now, however, we often saw him sunk in some deep reverie, his chin upon his hand, his eyes gazing full into the blaze of the leaping fire of logs, which always flamed upon the hearth in the great hall, where the most part of his time was spent.
He sought the old scenes with eager feet The scenes he had known as a boy; "Oh, for a draught of those fountains sweet, And a taste of that vanished joy!" He roamed the fields, he wooed the streams, His school-boy paths essayed to trace; The orchard ways recalled his dreams, The hills were like his mother's face. Oh, sad, sad hills! Oh, cold, cold hearth!
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