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Updated: May 7, 2025
When Milly woke up next morning there was no nice sunshine creeping on to her bed as it had done almost ever since they came to Ravensnest; but instead there was rain beating steadily against the window, coming down out of a heavy gray sky, and looking as if it meant to go on for ever. "Oh dear!" sighed Milly, as she began to dress, "we can't go out, and the wild strawberries will get so wet.
It seemed only a few minutes before they had got almost to the bottom, and there was a gate leading into a road, and a little village of white houses in front of them. They walked up the road a little way, and then father opened a big gate and let them into a beautiful garden full of rhododendrons like the Ravensnest garden. And who was this walking down the drive to meet them?
The latter, indeed, used to be fond of visiting the Nest, as my house was familiarly called, Ravensnest being its true name, whence those of the "patent" and village; and as Opportunity had early manifested a partiality for my dear old grandmother, and not less dear young sister, who occasionally passed a few weeks with me during the vacations, more especially in the autumns, I had many occasions of being brought within the influence of her charms opportunities that, I feel bound to state, Opportunity did not neglect.
You may not know the fact, but I as your guardian do know, that the quit-rents reserved by the crown when it granted the lands of Mooseridge and Ravensnest, were claimed by the State; and that, wanting money to save the people from taxes, it commuted with us, receiving a certain gross sum in satisfaction of all future claims." "Ay, that I did not know. Can the fact be shown?"
Our Swiss brethren have their chateaux and their habits that are a hundred times more aristocratic than anything about Ravensnest, without giving offence to liberty; and I feel persuaded, were the proudest establishment in all America pointed out to a European as an aristocratic abode, he would be very apt to laugh at it, in his sleeve.
If one were to ask Hugh Littlepage to solve the difficulty, he would have been very apt to answer that the "people" of Ravensnest wanted to compel him to sell lands which he did not wish to sell, and that not a few of them were anxious to add to the compulsory bargains conditions as to price that would rob him of about one-half of his estate; and that what the Albany philosophers called the "spirit of the institutions," was, in fact, a "spirit of the devil," which the institutions were expressly designed to hold in subjection!
Besides, we wish to pay our parting compliments to the ladies." "Squaw no good, now war-path no go to squaw. Huron French warrior, here." "Ay, and they are there, too. We shall be on their heels soon enough, by going to Ravensnest." "No soon 'nough can't do him. Path long, time short. Pale-face warrior in great hurry."
Aunt Emma was often at Ravensnest, and the children learned to love her better and better, so that even wild little Olly would remember to bring her stool, and carry her shawl, and change her plate at dinner; and Milly, who was always clinging to somebody, was constantly puzzled to know whose pocket to sit in, mother's or Aunt Emma's.
As for the flowers they gathered, there were so many I have no time to tell you about them wood-flowers and bog-flowers and grass-flowers, and ferns of all sizes to mix with them, from the great Osmunda, which grew along the Ravensnest Beck, down to the tiny little parsley fern.
The results were, that the grounds of Ravensnest possess a breadth that is the fruit of the breadth of our lands, and a rural beauty which, without being much aided by art, was still attractive.
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