The Wide, Wide World

Her grandmother was beside her when she awoke, and busied herself with evident delight in helping her to get off her travelling clothes and put on others; and then she took her downstairs and presented her to her aunt.

Lady Keith had not been at home, nor in Scotland, at the time the letters passed between Mrs. Montgomery and her mother; and the result of that correspondence respecting Ellen had been known to no one except Mrs. Lindsay and her son. They had long given her up; the rather as they had seen in the papers the name of Captain Montgomery among those lost in the ill-fated Duc d'Orleans. Lady Keith therefore had no suspicion who Ellen might be. She received her affectionately, but Ellen did not get rid of her first impression.

Her uncle she did not see until late in the day, when he came home. The evening was extremely fair, and having obtained permission, Ellen wandered out into the shrubbery; glad to be alone, and glad for a moment to exchange new faces for old; the flowers were old friends to her, and never had looked more friendly than then. New and old both were there. Ellen went on softly from flower-bed to flower-bed, soothed and rested, stopping here to smell one, or there to gaze at some old favourite or new beauty, thinking curious thoughts of the past and the future, and through it all taking a quiet lesson from the flowers; when a servant came after her with a request from Mrs. Lindsay that she would return to the house. Ellen hurried in; she guessed for what, and was sure as soon as she opened the door and saw the figure of a gentleman sitting before Mrs. Lindsay. Ellen remembered well she was sent to her uncle as well as her grandmother, and she came forward with a beating heart to Mrs. Lindsay's outstretched hand, which presented her to this other ruler of her destiny. He was very different from Lady Keith, her anxious glance saw that at once – more like his mother. A man not far from fifty years old; fine-looking and stately like her. Ellen was not left long in suspense; his look instantly softened as his mother's had done; he drew her to his arms with great affection, and evidently with very great pleasure; then held her off for a moment while he looked at her changing colour and downcast eye, and folded her close in his arms again, from which he seemed hardly willing to let her go, whispering as he kissed her, "You are my own child now, you are my little daughter, do you know that, Ellen? I am your father henceforth; you belong to me entirely, and I belong to you; my own little daughter!"

"I wonder how many times one may be adopted?" thought Ellen that evening; "but to be sure, my father and my mother have quite given me up here, that makes a difference; they had a right to give me away if they pleased. I suppose I do belong to my uncle and grandmother in good earnest, and I cannot help myself. Well! but Mr. Humphreys seems a great deal more like my father than my Uncle Lindsay. I cannot help that, but how they would be vexed if they knew it!"

That was profoundly true.

Ellen was in a few days the dear pet and darling of the whole household, without exception and almost without limit. At first, for a day or two, there was a little lurking doubt, a little anxiety, a constant watch, on the part of all her friends, whether they were not going to find something in their newly acquired treasure to disappoint them; whether it could be that there was nothing behind to belie the first promise. Less keen observers, however, could not have failed to see very soon that there was no disappointment to be looked for; Ellen was just what she seemed, without the shadow of a cloak in anything. Doubts vanished; and Ellen had not been three days in the house when she was taken home to two hearts at least in unbounded love and tenderness. When Mr. Lindsay was present he was not satisfied without having Ellen in his arms or close beside him; and if not there she was at the side of her grandmother.

There was nothing, however, in the character of this fondness, great as it was, that would have inclined any child to presume upon it. Ellen was least of all likely to try; but if her will, by any chance, had run counter to theirs, she would have found it impossible to maintain her ground. She understood this from the first with her grandmother; and in one or two trifles since had been more and more confirmed in the feeling that they would do with her and make of her precisely what they pleased, without the smallest regard to her fancy. If it jumped with theirs, very well; if not, it must yield. In one matter Ellen had been roused to plead very hard, and even with tears, to have her wish, which she verily thought she ought to have had. Mrs. Lindsay smiled and kissed her, and went on with the utmost coolness in what she was doing, which she carried through without in the least regarding Ellen's distress or showing the slightest discomposure; and the same thing was repeated every day, till Ellen got used to it. Her uncle she had never seen tried; but she knew it would be the same with him. When Mr. Lindsay clasped her to his bosom Ellen felt it was as his own; his eye always seemed to repeat, "my own little daughter;" and in his own manner love was mingled with as much authority. Perhaps Ellen did not like them much the worse for this, as she had no sort of disposition to displease them in anything; but it gave rise to sundry thoughts, however, which she kept to herself; thoughts that went both to the future and the past.

Lady Keith, it may be, had less heart to give than her mother and brother, but pride took up the matter instead; and according to her measure Ellen held with her the same place she held with Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay; being the great delight and darling of all three; and with all three, seemingly, the great object in life.

A few days after her arrival, a week or more, she underwent one evening a kind of catechising from her aunt as to her former manner of life; where she had been and with whom since her mother left her; what she had been doing; whether she had been to school, and how her time was spent at home, &c., &c. No comments whatever were made on her answers, but a something in her aunt's face and manner induced Ellen to make her replies as brief and to give her as little information in them as she could. She did not feel inclined to enlarge upon anything, or to go at all further than the questions obliged her; and Lady Keith ended without having more than a very general notion of Ellen's way of life for three or four years past. This conversation was repeated to her grandmother and uncle.

"To think," said the latter the next morning at breakfast – "to think that the backwoods of America should have turned us out such a little specimen of – "

"Of what, uncle?" said Ellen, laughing.

"Ah, I shall not tell you that," said he.

"But it is extraordinary," said Lady Keith, "how after living among a parcel of thick-headed and thicker tongued Yankees she could come out and speak pure English in a clear voice; it is an enigma to me."

"Take care, Catherine," said Mr. Lindsay, laughing, "you are touching Ellen's nationality; look here," said he, drawing his fingers down her cheek.

"She must learn to have no nationality but yours," said Lady Keith somewhat shortly.

Ellen's lips were open, but she spoke not.

"It is well you have come out from the Americans, you see, Ellen," pursued Mr. Lindsay; "your aunt does not like them."

"But why, sir?"

"Why," said he gravely, "don't you know that they are a parcel of rebels who have broken loose from all loyalty and fealty, that no good Briton has any business to like?"

"You are not in earnest, uncle?"

"You are, I see," said he, looking amused. "Are you one of those who make a saint of George Washington?"

"No," said Ellen, "I think he was a great deal better than some saints. But I don't think the Americans were rebels."

"You are a little rebel yourself. Do you mean to say you think the Americans were right?"

"Do you mean to say you think they were wrong, uncle?"

"I assure you," said he, "if I had been in the English army I would have fought them with all my heart."

"And if I had been in the American army I would have fought you with all my heart, Uncle Lindsay."

"Come, come," said he, laughing, "you fight! you don't look as if you would do battle with a good-sized mosquito."

"Ah, but I mean if I had been a man," said Ellen.

"You had better put in that qualification. After all, I am inclined to think it may be as well for you on the whole that we did not meet. I don't know but we might have had a pretty stiff encounter, though."

"A good cause is stronger than a bad one, uncle."

"But Ellen, these Americans forfeited entirely the character of good friends to England and good subjects to King George."

"Yes, but it was King George's fault, uncle; he and the English forfeited their characters first."

"I declare," said Mr. Lindsay, laughing, "if your sword had been as stout as your tongue, I don't know how I might have come off in that same encounter."

"I hope Ellen will get rid of these strange notions about the Americans," said Lady Keith discontentedly.

"I hope not, Aunt Keith," said Ellen.

"Where did you get them?" said Mr. Lindsay.

"What, sir?"

"These notions?"

"In reading, sir; reading different books; and talking."

"Reading! so you did read in the backwoods?"

"Sir!" said Ellen, with a look of surprise.

"What have you read on this subject?"

"Two lives of Washington, and some in the Annual Register, and part of Graham's United States; and one or two other little things."

"But those gave you only one side, Ellen; you should read the English account of the matter."

"So I did, sir; the Annual Register gave me both sides; the bills and messages were enough."

"What Annual Register?"

"I don't know, sir; it is English; written by Burke, I believe."

"Upon my word! And what else have you read?"

"I think that's all about America," said Ellen.

"No, but about other things?"