the snow, and shook hands with Tom, his Aunt Lucy's coachman, and the baggage-master, and the boy from the market where his aunt bought her meat, and Saul Sullivan, the fiddler, the most shiftless, easy-going fellow in Allington, who wore one of Grey's discarded hats given to him the previous year.
"Holloa! holloa! how are you?" he kept repeating, as one after another pressed up to him, all glad to welcome the city boy who was so popular among them. Hearing his mother's lamentations over the snow, he said to the coachman: "Here, Tom, take these traps, while I carry mother to the carriage." Then, turning to her, he continued; "Now, little mother, it will never do for those silk stockings to be spoiled, when there is a great strapping fellow like me to whom you are only a feather's weight," and lifting the lady in his arms as if she had really been a child, he carried her to the carriage, and put her in, tucking the blankets around her, and carefully brushing the snow from her bonnet. "Now, father, jump in, and let me shut the door. I'm going on the box with Tom. I like the snow, and it is not cold. I am going to drive myself." And in spite of his mother's protestations, Grey mounted to the box, and taking the reins, started the willing horses at a rapid rate toward Grey's Park, where Miss Lucy waited for them.
Bounding up the steps, Grey dashed into the hall, and shaking the snow from his coat and cap, seized his aunt around the waist, and after two or three hearty kisses, commenced waltzing around the parlor with her, talking incessantly, and telling her how delighted he was to be at Grey's Park again.
"Only think, I have not seen you for more than a year, and I've been to Europe since, and am a traveled young man. Don't you see marks of foreign culture in me?" and he laughed mischievously, for he knew his aunt would comprehend his meaning. "Then, too," he continued, "I'm an Andover chap now, but find it awful poky. I almost wish I had gone to Easthampton. Such fun as the boys have there! Sent a whole car-load of gates down to Springfield one night! I'd like to have seen the Easthamptonites when they found their gates gone, and the Springfielders when they opened that car. Holloa, mother! Isn't it jolly here? And don't you smell the mince pies? I am going to eat two pieces!" And the wild boy waltzed into the library in time to see his mother drop languidly into an arm-chair, with the air of one who had endured all it was possible to endure, and who considered herself a martyr.
"Pray be quiet, and come and unfasten my cloak. You forget that your Aunt Lucy is no longer young, to be whirled round like a top."
"Young or not, she is as pretty as a girl, any day," Grey replied, releasing his aunt and hastening to his mother.
Knowing her sister's dislike to the country, Miss Grey had spared no pains to make the house as attractive as possible. There was no furnace, but there were fires in every grate, and in the wide fire-place in the large dining-room, where the bay-window looked out upon the hills and the pretty little pond. Lucy's greenhouse had been stripped of its flowers, which, in bouquets, and baskets, and bowls, were seen everywhere, while pots of azaleas, and camellias, and rare lilies stood in every nook and corner, filling the rooms with a perfume like early June, when the air is full of sweetness.
But Mrs. Geraldine found the atmosphere stifling, and asked that a window might be opened, and that Grey would find her smelling-salts directly, as her head was beginning to ache.
Grey knew it always ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, and opened a window, but shut it almost immediately, for a cloud of snow came drifting in, and Mrs. Geraldine knew she should get neuralgia in such a frightful draught.
"Come to your room and lie down. You will feel better when you are rested," Lucy said, with a troubled look on her sweet face, as she led the way to the large, cheerful chamber which her sister always occupied when at Grey's Park.
"What time do you dine?" Geraldine asked, as she caught the savory smell of something cooking in the kitchen.
"I have fixed the dinner hour at half-past two," Lucy replied, and Geraldine rejoined:
"Half-past two! What a heathenish hour! and I do so detest early dinners."
"Yes, I know," Lucy answered, in an apologetic tone, "but Hannah cannot stay late, on account of her father" then, turning to her brother-in-law, who had just come in, she added: "You know, I suppose, that your father has not been as well as usual for several weeks. Hannah thinks he is failing very fast."
"Yes, she wrote me to that effect," Burton replied, "but she is easily alarmed, and so I did not attach much importance to it. Do you think him seriously ill?"
"I don't know except from Hannah herself, as he sees no one. I was there yesterday, but he would not allow me to enter his room. I am told that he has taken a fancy that no one shall go into his bedroom but Hannah and the doctor. That looks as if his mind might be a little unsettled."
Instantly there came back to Burton's mind what his aunt had said to him on her dying-bed: "There is a secret between them, but never try to discover it, lest it should affect you, too. There may be disgrace in it." Years had passed since Burton heard these words, and much good fortune had come to him. He had married Geraldine Grey, and had become president of a bank; he had increased in wealth and distinction, until no one stood higher on the social platform of Boston than he did. He had been to the Legislature twice and to Congress once, and was the Hon. Burton Jerrold, respected by every one, and, what to his narrow mind was better still, he was looked upon as an aristocrat of the bluest type. None of his friends had ever seen the queer old hermit at the farm-house, or Hannah either for that matter, for she had seldom been in Boston since Grey was a baby, and on the rare occasions when she did go she only passed the day, and had her lunch in the privacy of Mrs. Geraldine's room. Once or twice a year, as was convenient, Burton had been to the farm-house to see his father, whom he always found the same silent, brooding man, with hair as white as snow, and shoulders so bent that it was difficult to believe he had ever been upright. And so, gradually, Burton had ceased to wonder at his father's peculiarities and had forgotten his suspicions; but now they returned to him again, and he shivered as there swept suddenly over him one of those undefinable presentiments which sometimes come to us, and for which we cannot account.
"What time is Hannah coming?" he asked.
"I hardly know," Lucy replied; "the boy who stays here to do the outdoor work is to bring her as soon as she can leave her father, who will have no one with him in his room during her absence. He is very anxious to see Grey, but I doubt if he will even let him into the bedroom."
During this conversation Grey had listened intently, and now he exclaimed;
"I have it. My dinner will taste better if I see grandpa first, and show him my Alpenstock, with all those names burned on it. I mean to drive over after Aunt Hannah myself. It will be such fun to surprise them both."
"Grey, are you crazy to think of going out in this storm?" Mrs. Jerrold exclaimed.
But Grey persisted, and, pointing to the window, said:
"It is not snowing half as fast as it did; and look, there's a bit of blue sky. I can go, can't I, Aunt Lucy?"
"Ye-es, if Tom is willing," Lucy said, a little doubtfully; for she stood somewhat in awe of Tom, who did not like to harness oftener than was necessary.
"Pho! I'll risk Tom," Grey said. "Tom knows me;" and in less than ten minutes one of the bays was harnessed to the cutter, and Grey was driving along in the direction of the farm-house, which, for the first time in his life, struck him as something weird-like and dreary, standing there alone among the rocks, with the snow piled upon the roof and clinging in masses to the small
