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'I had quite forgotten the old choir, with their fiddles and bass-viols, said the home-comer, musingly. 'Are they still going on the same as of old? 'Bless the man! said Christopher Twink, the master-thatcher; 'why, they've been done away with these twenty year.
It was clear he had picked up many threads of his younger days; had renewed old acquaintances and made a hundred new ones. Play, he wrote, was a craze in England; the stakes frightened a home-comer from New England. For his part, he gamed but moderately. "As for the women, you have spoilt me for them. I see none not one, dearest who can hold a taper to you.
Least of all was she to let him suppose that his faithlessness had caused her any bitter heart-ache; if she desired that matters end rightly she must command herself to receive the home-comer no more than kindly, and to demean her as though his denying of her had touched her but lightly; nay, as though it were a pleasure to her vanity to be courted by the Brandenburg Junker and other noble gentlemen.
"No, although he was the bravest fellow in his company." Sosthène and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, smiled, and swore two simultaneous oaths of admiration. Zoséphine softly pinched her mother, and whispered something. Madame Sosthène addressed the home-comer aloud: "Did 'Thanase send no other message except that mere 'How-d'ye all do?" "No."
Now and then the silence was broken by the footsteps of some late home-comer, and over more than one narrow close, the sound of boyish voices went and came, from garret to garret, telling that the spirit of slumber had not yet taken possession of the place. But these soon ceased.
'And, of course, my old acquaintance, the annuitant, Mrs. Winter, who always seemed to have something on her mind, is dead and gone? said the home-comer, after a long silence. Nobody in the van seemed to recollect the name. 'O yes, she must be dead long since: she was seventy when I as a child knew her, he added. 'I can recollect Mrs.
Madge felt a grateful sense of happiness steal over her as she waited for Tom's return. It was, indeed, pleasant to be with her old friends who cared so much for her. To-day Fortress Monroe did not frown down upon the little home-comer from its stern battlements. The old fort seemed to offer her protection against her enemies.
It seemed to him, therefore, that the happiest suggestion he could make to the home-comer was to quench his thirst, and, further, to do so with the aid of a flask of wine. The stranger agreed to the first clause of the proposition and vetoed the second. "Ale," he said, emphatically. "Honest English ale.
"Barely; but I have matches." And now there might have been witnessed by any chance home-comer the curious sight of two extremely well-dressed men pottering through the attic hall of this decaying old domicile, reading the cards on the doors by means of a lighted match. And vainly. On none of the cards could be seen the name they sought. "We're on the wrong track," protested Mr. Blake.
"You have excellent taste," said she demurely, "but I never should credit you with the discriminations and fastidiousnesses of a decorator. And why should you want to take away from me the happiness of making my own nest? Don't you know it's the home-maker who finds most joy in the home? Yet it's the home-comer I want to have find the joy. Do you think you can rest in this room, Red?"
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