Keziah, who had been counting the days to the holidays, ran down first to meet us, beaming with pleasure; though when Jack, in the futile attempt to play leap-frog with her against her will, damaged her cap, and clung to her neck till I thought she would have been throttled, she indignantly declared that, "Now the young gentlemen was home there was an end of peace for everybody, choose who they might be."
I CORRESPOND WITH THE MAJOR--MY COLLECTION--OCCUPATIONS--MADAME AGAIN--FÊTE DE VILLAGE--THE BRITISH HOORAY.
I wrote to my old friends and relatives, with a full account of my new home. Rather a comically-expressed account too, I fancy, from the bits Uncle Buller used to quote in after years. I got charming letters from him, piquant with his dry humour, and full of affection. Matilda generally added a note also; and Aunt Theresa always sent love and kisses in abundance, to atone for being too busy to write by that post.
The fonder I grew of the Arkwrights, the better I seemed to love and understand Uncle Buller. Apart as we were, we had now a dozen interests in common--threads of those intellectual ties over which the changes and chances of this mortal life have so little power.
My sympathy was real, as well as ready, when the Major discovered a new insect, almost invisible by the naked eye, which thenceforward bore the terrible specific name of _Bulleriana_, suggesting a creature certainly not less than a rhinoceros, and surrounding the Major's name with something of the halo of immortality. He was equally glad to hear of Jack's beetles and of my fresh-water shells. I had taken to the latter as being "the only things not yet collected by somebody or other in the house;" and I became so infatuated in the pursuit that I used to get up at four o'clock in the morning to search the damp places and water-herbage by the river, it being emphatically "the early bird who catches" snails. After his great discovery, the Major constantly asked if I had found a specimen of _Helix Vandaleuriana_ yet. It was a joke between us--that new shell that I was to discover!
I have an old letter open by me now, in which, writing of the Arkwrights, he says, "Your dear father's daughter could have no better home." And, as I read, my father's last hours come back before me, and I hear the poor faint voice whispering, "You've got the papers, Buller? Arkwright will be kind about it, I'm sure." And, "It's all dark now." And with tears I wonder if he--with whom it is all light now--knows how well his true friends have dealt by me, and how happy I am.
