"But are you going?" I said; - "before my father and mother come home?"
"Immediately, Daisy; to-morrow. I must hasten back to my post, you know; before there is another Bull Run, if possible. It is very good that you are out of the way of such things," he said, eyeing me earnestly. "The very mention of them - do you know what it does?"
"It gives me a great feeling of pain, I know," I said, trying to rally.
"It does that, I see. I did not know the power of imagination was so strong in you. I thought you were rather a literalist."
"And I think I am," I answered as calmly as I could. "It does not require much imagination. It did not, when I was in Washington."
"It does not now," said the doctor; "for your cheeks have not got back their colour yet. What banished it, Daisy?"
It was the old tone and look I used to meet in my childhood, and to which I always then rendered obedience. For an instant the spell was upon me now; then I threw it off, shook hands with the doctor and parted from him with a bow and smile which told him nothing. And he succumbed in his turn; made me a profound reverence and left the room.
My first feeling was of gladness that he was gone. My next was, the sense that I was under my natural guardians once more. I felt it with a thrill of delight, even though I had a full consciousness that I was going to be far less my own mistress than for some time I had been accustomed to find myself. Dr. Sandford rather took laws from me, in most things. This however did not give me much concern. I went round the rooms to quiet myself, for I was growing more and more excited. I went studying one by one the objects in the little home museum, for such those drawing-rooms were to me. I read, not natural history but family history in them; here my father's hand had been, here By mother's, leaving some token of study, or luxury, or art, or feeling. A very handsome meerschaum seemed to give also a hint of my brother's presence. The home review did not quiet me; I found it would not do; I went to the window. And there I sat down immediately, to hear all that nature said to me; as once Miss Cardigan's flowers.
I had expected to see the town; and it was part of the town no doubt that stretched away before me, but it had rather the beauty of the country. There was nothing regular in streets or buildings, nor compact; the houses scattered away down the hill, standing here and there, alone and in groups, with fields or pieces of fields intermingling. Pretty houses, with quaint dormer windows and high sloping roofs. We were on a height, I found, from which the eye went down delightfully over this bit of the rambling old town. A courtyard, with grass and young trees, was the first thing next the house on this side; which I found was not the front; then the ground fell sharply, and most of the houses stood upon a level below bordering the lake. A stretch of the lake lay there, smooth, still, bearing the reflection of some houses on its opposite edge; where softened under a misty atmosphere another little town seemed to rest on a rising bank. And then, just behind it, rose the mountain, looking down upon lake and towns as if to forbid a thought of foolishness in any one who should ever live there. So, in its beautiful gravity, Mont Pilatte seemed to me, then and always. Are not mountains always witnesses for God? This first time I saw it, a misty cloud had swept across the breast of the mountain and hid part of the outline; but the head lifted itself in sunlight just above the veiling cloud, and looked down in unspeakable majesty upon the lower world. Always my eyes went back to that wonderful mountain head; then fell to the placid lake and the little town sleeping in misty sunlight on its further border; then caught the sharp pointed towers of a church or cathedral close by at my left hand, just within my picture; I could not see the whole church; then back to the soft veiled mountain. A more picturesque combination never went into a view. I sat still in a trance of pleasure, only my eyes moving slowly from point to point, and my heart and soul listening to the hidden melodies which in nature's great halls are always sounding. I do believe, for the matter of that, they are always sounding in nature's least chambers as well; but there is the tinkle of a silver bell, and there is the thunder of the great organ. At any rate I was quieted, comforted, soothed, and entirely myself again, by the time I had listened to Mont Pilatte for a couple of hours.
