excited. At the very top of her voice, she enunciated the one word "Aunt," and burst into a frantic fit of laughter. The indignation of the old ladies, when they discovered her standing in the chimney, laughing at them, waxed great. But when she began to cry, as well as laugh, and manifested symptoms of hysterics, then anger changed to concern. Hartshorn, valerian, lavender and paregoric, were rapidly sought for and found, and, whether she would or not, she had to take them. The true state of the case was soon explained. They would not listen to the opening of a shutter, for fear of robbers; but their room adjoined hers. They burned a taper; and they would leave their door ajar. Vara wished they had shut it, for she shook so, after they had disappeared, with repressed laughter, that she longed to laugh out and have done with it. She laughed, it seemed to her, all night, and, in the morning, she awoke laughing, while a bright sun streamed in at the windows, which had been already noiselessly opened. 174 XVII. Relations, Strange and Estranged. "For we are the same things our fathers have been, "They died-ay, they died-and we, things that are now, 66 Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter, holding both his sides."* "When the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how hard it is to find true sympathy, how few love us for ourselves, how few will befriend us in onr misfortunes; then it is we think of the mother we have lost." THE visit, begun with this singular adventure, was one of great pleasure to Vara. Her aunts, it is true, were stately and formal; nursing the pride of ancestry on the smallest incomes, with, what Vara soon discovered to be, the most rigid system of economy; and strangely given to that personal vanity, a passion for dress, spending much of their time and thought in remodeling and modernizing the heirlooms of silk, satin, and velvet, which had descended to them from their ancestors. Yet their hearts were full of simplicity and benevolence. If Vara had to be a little precise in her manners, and school her vivacity into quietness, and if she had to be very careful not to offend some few little whims and prejudices of the dear old ladies, yet they were very kind, and, on the whole, very considerate of her, and she loved them. They told her much of the family history, of which owing to her age when she left her island-home, and the little there was there to suggest the topic, she knew RELATIONS, STRANGE AND ESTRANGED. 175 nothing. She now learned that her father passed his boyhood in this mansion; that his father resided here many years a widower, with no society but that of his son and maiden sisters, husbanding the resources of the family, that he might give his son a liberal education; that the picture she had admired, in the old parlour, where was the Turkish carpet, was the likeness of her father's mother; that their grandfather and her great-great-grandfather had built this house, and had lived in princely magnificence; that he had a large family; that the homestead had descended to their father and her great-grandfather; that his share of the property did not enable him to live so sumptuously as his father had; that, in order to increase his means, he had entered into unfortunate speculations, which had nearly stript them of everything; and that now they had only a lifeinterest in this old house, which, at their death, would become the property of her father; that they could never forgive him for deserting the country; they respected missionaries, but he owed something to the name of Austen! and their hope now was, that she would marry, inherit that house, and restore it to its former grandeur ! "Oh! dear Aunt Hetty," said Vara, when she first heard the expression of this wish, "would it not be a higher, a nobler object, to seek the restoration of poor fallen human creatures to the glorious mansions of Heaven ?" "Tush! my child, that is the way your father used to talk. You can do your duty to God and man without being a missionary." "But what, Aunty, if God calls me to be a missionary ?" "Your first duty, Vara, is to your family!" Vara smiled; her aunts were too old to be talked out of the prejudices of a lifetime. They told her much of her father which she loved to hear. She learned from them what sacrifices he had made in entering the ministry, and what opposition he had breasted in devoting himself to a missionary career. "He never would have gone," they said, "if their brother had been alive. Alfred always was wayward; only his father could manage him." And yet, severely as his aunts reflected on his conduct in this particular, they evidently appreciated and admired, while they deplored, the magnanimity of that Christian spirit which had laid all at the foot of the cross. Much, too, they praised her mother; her piety, her sense, her taste, her beauty, her elegance. "Most deplorable, indeed," said Aunt Hetty, "and a dark day for the house of Austen, when two such glorious creatures exiled themselves to a savage island. It was like casting pearls before-" and the old lady called for her gold vinaigrette. The old ladies never tired of talking, nor Vara of listening; and many were the stories they told of the olden times, of the traditionary visits to that mansion of colonial governors and princes of the blood; of recollected balls and dinners, when ladies wore hoops and gentlemen wigs; of weddings and deaths; of the venerable grandfather and the extraordinary dancing-master, who had instructed them in those matters of form and etiquette, carriage and gesture, which they still followed with as much precision as if they were still responsible to those ancient, but long since defunct worthies. Old Phillis, too, the black woman in the kitchen, had her tales to tell of the family and of "the young ladies," as she always persevered in calling Aunt Hetty and Aunt Jane. She had been a slave in the family, and her mother before her, and Judy, the maid of all work, and Julius Cæsar, the waiter, were her grand-children. Phillis herself did little but talk. Vara was shown by her aunts such piles and heaps of finery, as she could hardly believe to have been accumulated by one family, and which testified at least the careful keeping they had received. Brocades, stiff with embroidery ; satin and silk and velvet dresses, robe, bodice, stomacher complete; India mull dresses, worked, ruffled, and flounced; laces; feathers; artificial flowers; ribbons; spangles; bugles; and, what astonished her more than all, drawers full of shoes and slippers, high-heeled and low-heeled, satin, prunella, and buckskin, black, white, blue, red, and green. Many were the pleasant walks she took. She formed agreeable acquaintances in the village: and much did she delight, on the silent Sabbath-day, to walk through the with grass-grown streets, between avenues of majestic trees, so goodly a company, to the sacred house where pilgrim fathers once worshipped with simple rites and earnest hearts. Thus passed rapidly three weeks. Sorry she was when the time came for her departure. Sorry, too, were her stately aunts. The last words of Aunt Hetty, "Farewell, dear child, fear God and forget not that you are an Austen," sounded very much, she thought, like the Cromwellian exhortation, "Trust in Providence and keep your powder dry." If Vara had experienced a great change in leaving New York, with its restless activities, for the spacious and empty mansion on the banks of the quiet Connecticut, still greater was the change from the etiquette and cheerful tranquillity of that mansion, to the noisy, laughing, talkative, lively family of Cousin Thornwell, in the town of Franklinburg, State of New York, some fifty miles from the metropolis. Under the agreeable escort of the minister of the village church which her aunts attended, Vara had returned to New York, and, after spending a night with the Boyles, had accompanied Charles on a business tour to the west, as far as to Franklinburg; and, having been safely deposited by him in an omnibus, arrived at Mr. Thornwell's door just as a neighbouring clock pealed out the hour of twelve. It was a narrow, three-story, brick house, with the least bit of a court-yard in front. The noise in the parlour, audible even before the door was opened, prevented the approach of the omnibus from being heard; and she was ushered, without ceremony, into a room, where girls, books, chairs and tables, were strewed about in admirable confusion. On her appearance the clamour ceased, and three or four young ladies, with very red faces, dishevelled tresses and disordered dresses, picked themselves up from the floor, not without much subdued laughter. An elderly lady, in black silk, fat and goodnatured, who evidently had been enjoying the fun, advanced with the salutation: "This is cousin Austen's daughter, I suppose? We are N |