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This would be the only chance for Emlyn to rejoin her father or to learn his fate. The little thing was wild with excitement at the news. Disdainfully she tore off what she called Rusha's Puritan rags, though as that offended maiden answered "her own were real rags in spite of all the pains Patience had taken with them.
Holworth wished him to come and rest at the Vicarage, but he was very anxious to get home, and after he had taken a little food, Andrew Luck offered to share with Ben and Rusha's husband the carrying him back between them on an elbow chair. This pleased him, and he looked up to Andrew and said, "You are in the same mind as long ago?"
Peter Pierce, Rusha's lover, and more old comrades than Patience quite desired, offered their services in aiding Ben with the cattle and other necessary labours, but as the first excitement wore off, these volunteers became scantier, and when nothing was to be heard but "just the same," nothing to be seen but a weak, wan figure sitting wrapped by the fire, the interest waned, and the gulley was almost as little frequented as before.
The great black iron pot still hung in the chimney with the very meal and kail broth that Patience had been boiling in it, and Rusha's little stool stood by the hearth. Then the great chest, or ark as Patience called it, where all the Sunday clothes were kept, had been crushed in and the upper things singed, but all below was safe.
As to Rusha's servants, at the first announcement of freedom, every one went out from her presence forever, so soon as they could gather their wretched wardrobes into shape for departure. The most of them wore their all away, and that was sufficiently scanty. All went, we say. No, Kizzie remained. She was now a poor old woman of seventy.
And when all was done, and she was transformed into a little russet-robed, white-capped being, nothing would serve her, but to collect all the brightest cranesbill flowers she could find, and stick them in her own bodice and Rusha's. Patience could not at all understand the instinct for bright colours, but even little Ben shouted "Pretty, pretty."
Patience had made an attempt to get her to exchange her soiled finery for a sober dress of Rusha's; but "What shall I do, Stead?" said the grave elder sister, "I cannot get her to listen to me, she says she is no prick-eared Puritan, but truly she is not fit to be seen." Stead whistled. "Besides that she might bring herself and all of us into danger with those gewgaws." "That's true," said Stead.
This was galling to Rusha's pride; but it refuted silently her assertion that courage flowed not in Northern blood, for Hubert's mother had been a Northerner. This young man, at the firing of Sumter, had passed his twenty-first year. He had graduated with honor from school and college, and was on the eve of embarking for Paris, where he was to pursue his medical studies.
I will leave the old life behind me, and Miss Rusha too, thank the Lord. Ah, poor Master Duncan! what a life he must live of it the best master that ever servant had good, kind Master Duncan! The trees hide Kennons from view; I shall not see it again. I would liked to have said farewell to Bessie, and to Chloe and Amy, and to Miss Rusha's Kizzie, too.
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