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I can't give you the last, but I can the first if you will accept them. You need some country living." "O Miss Ercildoune, will you let me do your work at your own home? I know it would do me good just to be under the same roof with you, and then I should have all the things you speak of combined and another one added. If you only will!" This was not the plan Francesca had proposed to herself.
"A courtier indeed," she laughed; "you need not to seek your answer. You make a poor girl afraid. But see, yonder are the lights of my pavilion. Will it please you to alight and enter? They do not say that Thomas of Ercildoune had any cause for complaint. Do you know," she continued, a fresh gaiety striking into her voice, "it was in this very wood that he was lost."
"If he looks like a king, I know somebody who looks like a princess," thought the happy young fellow, gazing down upon the proud, dainty figure by his side; but he smiled as he said, "What a little aristocrat you are, Miss Ercildoune! what a pity you were born a Yankee!" "I am not a Yankee, Mr. Surrey," replied the little aristocrat, "if to be a Yankee is to be a native of America.
"Yet I have such absolute faith in Willie's fine taste and sense that I feel no anxiety." "Nor I; yet I shall investigate a bit to-night at Augusta's." "Clara tells me that when Miss Ercildoune understood it was to be a great party, she insisted on ending her visit, or, at least, staying for a while with her aunt, but they would not hear of it." "Mrs. Lancaster goes back to England soon?"
Although a great many lovely things are scattered about of recent make, the wood-work and the heavy furniture are aristocratic from their very age, and in their way, literally perfection. "Miss Ercildoune met me with not quite her usual grace and ease. She was, no doubt, surprised at my unexpected appearance, and I then thought, as a consequence slightly embarrassed.
The portraits of Ercildoune and his children may seem to some exaggerated; those who have, as I, the rare pleasure of knowing the originals, will say, "the half has not been told." Every leading New York paper, Democratic and Republican, was gone over, ere the summary of the Riots was made; and I think the record will be found historically accurate.
It was with extreme difficulty Ercildoune had controlled his face and voice, through the last of this distressing recital, and with the final word he bowed his forehead on the picture-frame, convulsed with agony, while voiceless sobs, like spasms, shook his form. Surrey realized that no words were to be said here, and stood by, awed and silent.
"Poor, dear Miss Ercildoune!" half sobbed, half scolded Sallie, as she sat at her work, blooming and, fresh, the day after her return. "What a tangled thread it is, to be sure," jerking at her knotty needleful. "Well, I know what I'll do, I'll treat her as if she was a queen born and crowned, just so long as I have anything to do with her, so I will." And she did.
For me, I misdoubt that Merlin, the Welsh prophet on whom they set store, and the rest of the soothsayers, are all in one tale with old Thomas Rhymer, of Ercildoune, whose prophecies our own folk crack about by the ingle on winter nights at home.
She had intended sending Sallie away to some pleasant country or seaside place, till she was refreshed and ready to come to her work once more. Sallie did not know what to make of the expression of the face that watched her, nor of the exclamation, "Why not? let me try her." But she had not long to consider, for Miss Ercildoune added, "Be it so.
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