Chapter XI: A Joyous Meeting in June

June with its roses, June
The gladdest month in the capricious year,
With its thick foliage and its sunlight clear,
And with a drowsy tune,
Of the bright, leaping waters as they pass
Laughingly on amid the springing grass.

Anna and Dick returned rather sooner than they were expected; but not sooner than Old Lyon Hall was ready, and its inmates anxious to receive them.

On Saturday morning, while General Lyon, Drusilla and little Leonard with his nurse, were all out on the lawn enjoying the splendor of the early June day, before breakfast, the wagon from the Foaming Tankard was seen approaching the house.

“What can that mean?” inquired the old gentleman, looking at it, as it rumbled on towards the house.

“Perhaps Anna and Dick to disencumber themselves, have sent the luggage on in advance,” suggested Drusilla.

“But, as they are to come down by to-day’s boat that would scarcely be worth while,” reflected the old gentleman.

While they were discussing the question, the wagon, instead of going round to the servants’ entrance as it would have done had it contained only luggage, rattled up to the front of the house.

And the instant it stopped, Anna jumped out, and ran to her grandfather, who caught her in his arms.

“My darling daughter,—my darling, darling daughter, I am so delighted to see you,” he exclaimed over and over again, as he pressed her to his heart, while she answered him only with smiles and kisses, and both forgot that anybody else was waiting to be noticed.

Meanwhile, Dick was shaking hands with Drusilla, and chirping to little Leonard, and pulling rattles and whistles and dancing jacks out of his pocket, and in his eagerness doing everything at the same time.

“Let me look in your face, dear child,” said the old man, taking the bride’s head between his hands, and gazing wistfully into her tearful but laughing eyes; “are you happy, my Anna?”

“Yes, dear grandpa,” said Anna, earnestly, as her eyes overflowed.

“Quite happy?” anxiously persisted the veteran.

“Well—no,” answered Anna, laughing, and making a face, “perfect bliss is not the boon of mortals, I believe. And, to tell the truth, I have a _corn_ that troubles me, to say nothing of the slightest possible twing of neuralgia caught on the boat last night—moon-gazing.”

“Oh, you came on the night boat?”

“Yes; our first plan was to stop in the city last night, but we remembered our pleasant trip on the water by moonlight when we left here four weeks ago, and as the moon was full, we thought we would come down again by moonlight, and then, too, we thought it would be so much pleasanter to reach home this morning, in time to breakfast with you, and have the whole day before us for reunion, than to get here late to-night, too tired to walk or do anything else but get supper and go to bed. Don’t you agree with me that it was best to come home now,—just now?”

“Yes, my darling, that I do,” answered the General, heartily; “but I am sorry you have got neuralgia.”

Anna looked at him, quizzically.

“I am not quite sure that I have got it, or ever had it; but I am quite certain about the corn. Now, ain’t you going to speak to Dick?”

“Dick! Certainly; how do you do, my dear boy? A hundred welcomes home!” exclaimed the General, releasing Anna from his embrace, and turning to greet the “unlucky dog.”

Dick was then in the act of tossing his godson high in his arms, until he made him laugh and crow aloud, and then looking him solemnly in the face, and saying:

“I am your godfather, sir. Treat me with more respect, and don’t be taking me for your equals!”

Now he turned his bright face, and held out his eager hand to receive his uncle’s clasp, saying:

“I am very glad to get home, sir, and gladder still to see you.”

Anna had gone to embrace Drusilla.

“How happy I am to see you again!” she said.

“And I you,” answered Drusa, smiling.

“How well you are looking, dear!” exclaimed each to the other, speaking simultaneously.

“And now, Dick, give me little Leonard; I want to look at him! Remember, sir, if you _are_ his godfather, I am his godmother, and have my rights. Don’t be trying to exercise man’s usurped prerogative by ‘claiming the child,’” said Anna, holding out her hands for the boy.

“I shall never attempt to assert man’s prerogative against woman’s rights,” laughed Dick placing the child in her arms, and then going to pay and dismiss the wagon which was now unloaded of all the luggage it had brought, and was ready to go.

“Bless my soul! Anna, my dear, how came you to return by such a very rude and primitive conveyance as that?” inquired the General, as the great old wagon rattled and rumbled past on its way back.

“Couldn’t get any other, dear grandpa! The ‘Foaming Tankard’ don’t boast a carriage of any description except this.”

“If I had only known, I could have sent the coach to meet you. I should have sent it anyway this afternoon.”

“But you wouldn’t have had me to wait till the afternoon for it, dear grandpa?” laughed Anna.

“Oh, no, no, no! by no means! Only, if I had but known, I could have so easily sent it. Such a conveyance for a lady to come in!” exclaimed the old gentleman, as he gazed after the retreating wagon that rather jumped and bounced along than rolled.

“It was delightful! It was better than a hard trotting-horse! I liked to be tossed as much as Master Leonard himself does! It has given me such a shaking up and such an appetite for breakfast as I never had before! I am famished, grandpa!”

“Oh, exactly! exactly! so you must be! Drusa! Drusa, my dear!” exclaimed the old gentleman, looking around for his young volunteer housekeeper.

But Drusilla had already vanished within to give her orders.

“And now, dear grandpa, I will go to my room to change my dress. I presume it is ready for me, and I know where to find it. Dick, see that the luggage is sent up,” said Anna, turning to go into the house.

But she was met at the door by all the household servants, who had learned her arrival from Drusilla and had come out to welcome her.

Hands were shaken and good-wishes heartily offered and warmly received, and then Anna passed on to her apartment.

In less than half an hour she hurried down-stairs, looking fresh and blooming in her white muslin dress with blue ribbons.

The family were waiting for her in the breakfast room, and as soon as she entered she was greeted again and seated in the pleasantest seat at the table.

All the windows were open, and all the brightness, beauty, fragrance, and music of June filled the place. The morning sunshine played upon every polished point; the fresh breeze danced with every fold of drapery; the aroma of the clove pink, the cape jessamine, the tea rose, the clematis, and the heliotrope perfumed the air. Humming-birds flitted about like winged flowers. And the song of the thrush in the sweet-briar bush was echoed by the mocking-bird from the acacia tree!

“What a beautiful morning! And what a beautiful scene! In all our travels, grandpa, we did not see so sweet an old home as this!” said Anna enthusiastically.

“I am glad you think so, my dear; but great allowance must be made for your natural attachment to your birthplace,” smiled the General, as he sipped his coffee.

“Now, Drusilla, what do you say?” inquired Anna, appealing to her friend.

“I have not seen very much of the world to compare this with other places; but still, I think you are right, Anna. It is a ‘sweet old home.’ It is perfectly beautiful, and besides it seems to me that every one who was ever born here, or ever lived and died here, must have been very good and loving, that their spirits still pervade the place, and make it holy,” said Drusilla, warmly.

“My dear, you will make me so much in love with my home that I shall not like to grow old and die and leave it,” said the General, smiling.

“Dear uncle, please to believe that there is not the slightest necessity for you to grow old, much less to die before your century is completed. And if you do so I shall think that you will be treating your loving children very badly,” said Drusilla.

“My dear!”

“Yes, I _do_. I think the deaths of most people who die, come of their indifference to the power that the Lord has given them of living on. Now, I think that you have the power to live on in the full possession of all your faculties to the age of one hundred years at the very least, and how much longer I don’t know. And I shall take it very hard of you, if you don’t do it, uncle.”

“Hem; I shall try to oblige you my dear,” said the General, dryly.

“I hope you will! for you know I expect you to live to see your namesake, Leonard Lyon, junior, a bishop, a judge or a general, (whichever he shall please to be, for it will depend upon his choice of a profession,) or even President of the United States. The highest position is open to competition and you cannot tell what he may be yet; you must live to see.”

“Do you intend to live your century out, Drusilla?”

“If it please Providence, yes; for I shall try to preserve the gift of life he has given me. And when I shall be a hundred years old, my little Leonard will be eighty-four, and a wigged chief-justice, or a mitred archbishop or something equally exalted. And I should not wonder if you should be alive and merry then.”

“Oh, tut, tut, tut! you are laughing at me, little Drusa!”

“Heaven forbid! People enough have lived to be a hundred and forty. Henry Jenkins lived to be a hundred and sixty-nine, and even then he did not die from old age, or from disease, but from sheer imprudence, I might say accident, such as would have killed any man at any age.”

“My dear niece, that case was a highly exceptional one.”

“Well, and why shouldn’t you make your own case a highly exceptional one?”

“My dear, you are extravagant.”

“Well, maybe I am, in talking about a hundred and sixty-nine years; but I do positively insist upon your living a full century. That is only fair.”

“My darling, our prayers should be not so much for a _long_ life as for a _good_ life.”

“I stand corrected,” said Drusilla, reverently; “but for all that I insist upon the century; for I think it was the Lord’s design that man should live so long.”

“Let me live so long as my life can be of use to others and no longer,” said the veteran.

“Your life is of use to others as long as it gives happiness to others, and therefore I insist upon the century,” persisted Drusilla.

“Well, my dear, I have no particular objection,” laughed the General, as they all arose from the table.

Then came the healthful walk around the grounds, the General with his darling granddaughter hanging on his arm, and Dick and Drusilla, and the nurse with the baby, sauntering along promiscuously.

During this walk Anna gave her grandfather a very sprightly and entertaining description of her journey; and in return he told her how he and Drusilla had passed their time at home.

Dick amused Drusilla with spirited sketches of travel.

When the windings of their walk brought them around home again, Dick proposed a drive through the forest to Hammond House to see the progress of the works there that must, he thought, be now near their completion.

And as all assented to the proposition, the General ordered the large six-seated family carriage; and the whole party, including little Leonard and his nurse, started for a long drive through the summer woods to Hammond House.

It was but twelve o’clock noon when they reached the house—an old mansion standing upon a high headland at the junction of Wild River with the Upper Potomac.

The woods grew up to the very garden wall and clustered thick about it.

There were mountain brooks in the neighborhood, running down to the Wild River and swelling its stream before it fell into the Potomac.

The trout fisheries there were considered very fine in their season. And it was a part of the family programme for coming years to spend the fishing season at Hammond.

It was now the beginning of the trout fishing season, and so the General and Dick, having seen Drusilla and Anna safely in the house, procured fishing tackle from Byles, the overseer, and went down to one of the bright, gravelly-bedded streams to fish.

Anna and Drusilla, with the babe and nurse, were taken by Mrs. Byles to a clean and airy bedroom, where they laid off their bonnets and sat down to rest.

The house was not yet in order; nor could it be said to be in disorder—the papering, painting, glazing and gilding were all completed; but the handsome new furniture remained in its packing cases, and encumbered halls and passages.

Overseer Byles and his wife occupied rooms in a wing of the building during the progress of the repairs; but they were to move to a neighboring cottage as soon as the house should be ready to receive the family.

Our party spent a very pleasant day at Hammond House.

Drusilla and Anna, with the baby and the nurse, wandered about the grounds and along the banks of the river until they were tired, and then they sat down under the trees to rest and to talk.

About two o’clock General Lyon and Dick returned from the trout stream well laden with spoil.

They gave the fish to Mrs. Byles, with a request that she would have them dressed for their dinner, and have the table set out in the open air between three broad oak trees where the shade was thickest.

At four o’clock they were called to dinner—a sylvan repast served _al fresco_.

There were trout, roast lamb with mint sauce, and green peas, potatoes and lettuce, and for dessert cherries, strawberries and ice-cream. That was all.

“But if I had known in time that you were coming, ladies and gentlemen, I would have got up something more acceptable,” said the housekeeper, apologetically.

“I defy you to have done that, Mrs. Byles. Your dinner is excellent,” replied the General. And all the other members of the party agreed with him, and proved their sincerity upon the edibles set before them.

Immediately after dinner they were served with excellent coffee and tea.

Then the General ordered the carriage for their return home.

After another pleasant ride through the forest, they reached Old Lyon Hall at sunset.

“We have had a delightful day at your other house, Dick,” said the General, heartily.

“_Our_ other home, sir, if you please; for if Anna and myself are to be at home at Old Lyon Hall during one period of the year, you and Drusilla must be at home at Hammond House during another part,” said Dick.

“And when you wish to spend a winter in Washington you must all be at home with me at Cedarwood,” added Drusilla.

“Agreed! agreed!” said General Lyon, Anna and Dick in a breath.

After tea that evening they were pleasantly surprised by a visit from the Seymours.

It seems the old gentleman had got news of Anna’s arrival and had come over with his wife and daughter, ostensibly to welcome home the bride and bridegroom; but really too glad of a good excuse to hear Drusilla sing and play.

They spent a long evening; and Drusilla gratified her old admirer with some very choice music, in which she was ably assisted by Anna and Dick—Anna singing second and Dick bass.

Early in the next week Mr. and Mrs. Hammond issued cards for a reception on the following Monday. And when the appointed day came they received their “dear five hundred friends” and had a crowded house with the coming and going of visitors from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon.

And this reception was the signal for a round of entertainments given to the newly married pair.

The first of a series was a ball at Colonel Seymour’s, which was duly honored by all the family from Old Lyon Hall, including Drusilla, of course.

Then there was an evening party with music, but not dancing, at the Reverend Dr. Barber’s.

Even the struggling medical practitioner at Saulsburg gave a tea-drinking.

And these neighborhood festivities in honor of the bride were kept up in good old-fashioned country style for a month or six weeks.

On the first of July, Hammond House being quite ready for occupation, the whole family from Old Lyon Hall went there to spend a few weeks, that the General might indulge in his favorite pastime of trout-fishing.

Here they remained until the first of September, when the near neighborhood of fresh water streams being considered unwholesome, they returned to Old Lyon Hall.

“And now,” said Drusilla, when they were once more settled, “now it is my turn. Our next migration must be to Cedarwood.”

“Are you so anxious to leave the sweet old home?” inquired General Lyon, a little reproachfully.

“Oh, no indeed. Only when we do go, we must go to Cedarwood.”

“Agreed,” said the General, “we will go there next winter.”

And so the matter was settled; for though all his young people were grown up and married, yet the word of the veteran soldier was law in the family circle.

During all this time Drusilla had not heard from Alexander or even expected to hear from him. She did not grieve after him. In the “sweet old home,” in the love of her dear friends and in the caresses of her darling boy, she was almost as happy as it is given a mortal to be. But though she did not mourn over his absence, neither did she lose her interest in his welfare. She took the principal London and Paris papers upon the bare possibility of gaining intelligence of his movements.

Once she found his name in the list of visitors presented to the Queen at one of her Majesty’s drawing-rooms published in the “Court Journal.”

On another occasion she saw him announced as one of the speakers at a public meeting at Exeter Hall, noticed in the “Morning Chronicle.”

Again he was named as the owner of the winning horse at certain world-renowned races, reported in “Bell’s Life.”

That was all she knew about him.

Every week Drusilla received mis-spelled letters from her steward or housekeeper at Cedarwood.

“Mammy,” chiefly discoursed of cows and calves, hens and chickens, and ducks and geese.

Mammy’s “old man” treated of the condition of the “craps,” the health of the “hosses,” oxen, sheep, pigs, and so forth.

And Drusilla having been a pupil of that famous agriculturist, the late Mrs. Judge Lyon, was well able to give instructions to her farm-managers.

Thus, busily and happily passed the days of the little lady, until events occurred again to change the current of her life.