LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2001, 23 July 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

fifi een—fourteen—thi rteen. Concluded.) ‘lt was a perfectly natural one, 1 said. Airs Ashurst, pleasantly. ‘ And now pray resume your seat) Mr Ashe, and lot me explain in my turn. I have a dear old friend, Mrs Galloway Cummings, of Newbnryport, whose sister married Mr Francis Ashe, of Salem. She wrote some months ago to say that her young nephew, Albert Ashe, was coming on to study in the Medical School of Philadelphia, and we have been looking for him in a vague way since February ; so when my daughters read your card. “Mr A. G. Ashe,” they naturally took it for granted that you were he. You see there was a blunder on both sides, and we have apologies to make as well as you.’ «I can not regret my share in the mistake,’ said Alex, rising to go, ‘since it has procured me one of the pleasantest evenings of my life.’ He glanced at Amy as he spoke. Was there a little answering gleam in her eyes ? He half dared to hope it. » But about these Salem Ashes.’ said Mrs Ashurst, desirous to sat him at ease, and end the interview without embarrassment, ‘ ar they your relatives in any way ?’ < I am afraid it is a distant consinship, if any. My uncle, I think, has spoken of some

remote connections a 1; Salem or Marblehead, but lam not aura of the fact?. .and now X must wish yon good evening, with renewed apologies, aod go in search of She=s osher Ashuretr, at 13—no 1514 That will be two squares further up in this same street, will it not?’

‘Yes, and I think 1514 is Mr Walter Ashurat’s number. He ia a distant connection of ray husband’s, but we have never met them. They are old residents in Philadelphia, and wo new comers, yen must know. You see, we have mixed up obscure couusinshipe, as well names and numbers, in this odd double misunderstanding of ours, Mr Ashe.’ .So, with courteous farewells. Ales took: bis leave, and finding it too late for farther callo, went back to hia hotel heavy-hearted, for with ad courtesy and all her pleasantness. Mrs Ashurst had not asked ifim to call again. What could be done ? far go ho maat and would—that he was resolved upon. His spirits rose when, a little later he missed his letter case.

‘ I shall have to call to ask for it ’ he thought, and fortified by this reflection, went to bed and slept soundly. Next morning ha devoted himself to the ‘other Asharsts,’ who were easily found. No. 1514 proved to be a mamma of pretensions, wide and ample, with bays, balconies, carved stonework, a stable alongside, and in all respects belonging to that order of architecture known ia newspaper parlance ae the ‘truly palatial.’ Mr Ashe was ushered through a marblepaved hall into two dimly Bglted and magnificent drawing rooms, w.itre rivulets of satin meandered down either side of lofty, close blinded windows, and a pa;terra of huge pale-colored flowers from the looms of Aubuasioa covered the floor. Each gilded and carved chair and sofa wore a jacket of linen for the protection of iis silken glories, each table and console boasted its unmeaning strew of costly trifles ; chandeliers, pictures, mirrors, all were swathed in tarlatan as a protection from possible flies; while the family hearth was represented by a lacquered register, which grinned naohearfully from the midst c! a slab of marble, monomental apparently, which fill-d the whole opening of the fireplace.

This chill and gorgeous solitude Alex had to himself for a quarter of an hour, before a rustling on the stairs announced the approach of the ladies of the family, and Mrs A hnrst and her daughters appeared in a resplendence of French dresses. She, a stately dame of the conventional type, welcomed him graciously, and invited him to dinner on the next day but one. It was but short notice to collect a party, she remarked, but they would do theT best. The young ladies, three in number, were handsome creatures, very like each other, and like half a hundred girls whom Alex had met before. They talked enough for animation and not too mneb for good taste ; their attitudes and movements were studiously graceful; they had shrill, high-pitched voices, and were so perfectly at iheir ease as to give the impression of having been barn equal to any social emergency which could possibly arise in the course of their lives. Alex mentioned hia mistake of the night before, and found the tala received with rather contemptuous amusement. There was a family of that name, Mrs Aahuist believed, but she knew nothing about them. They lived near Thirteenth street, did they ? Ah! Very odd, to be sure. Hadn’t she heard somewhere that they taught something or other?—appealing to her girls. Miss Ashurat thought that they did, and with a faint—very faint—degree cf interest asked, ‘lsn’t one of the daughters rather pretty ?’ after which the subject dropped. Alex Ashe was conscious of a sense of relief when, the call being over, he found himself again in the street. ‘What tiresome women,’ he muttered. Yet why were they so tiresome? Ho had been familiar wiih just such women all hia life, but never before had found them unendurable. * Bat then I had never seen \ my Ashurst,’ he meditated. 1 Marry one of those girls ! Not if they owned the mines of Golcoada, and Uncle Nat went down on his knees to me ! ’ His call of enquiry after the note case he timed so as to hit what he suspected to be the leisurely hour of the family, in the later evening. He was fortunate—the ladies were at home, and evidently expecting him, for the letter case lay conspicuous on the table, and Mrs Ashurst began with apology. ‘I should have sent it to you had we known your address, but you gave us none, yon remember.’ ‘I should have been moat unwilling to give you that trouble, and besides ’ —candidly— ‘ when I missed it, I was very glad, for it gave me a pretext for sseing yon ail again ’ He was so frankly handsome ai he spoke, looking straight into Mrs Ashnrst’s eyes the while, that she was gnatly p Laved with him-

‘ We are glad to see yon, without any pretext,’ she said, ‘And now, Mr Ashe, sit down and tell ns if yonr quest of to-d*y has been successful —if you have found your uncle’s Ashurst?, the real Simon pares.’ So began another evening of enchantment. This time when onr hero took leave, Mrs Ashurst cordially invited bi n to come again, and while he eagerly thanked her, Amy, taking tho forgotten letter case from the table, handed it to him, with a wicked little smile, saying, ‘ You musn’t forget this, Mr Ashe.’

And he, quite unable to keep from laughing, replied, ‘Ho, since Mrs >'ehnrst is so kind as to say I may come without an excuse ; otherwise I should try hard to leave it for the second time. ’

Other evenings followed, each pleasanter than the last. There was the sweetest atmosphere about the mother and daughters, Alex thought ; they were so cordial, so intelligent, so unaffectedly fond of one another. Little by little he gathered the facts of their history, not from any formal revelation, hnt by chance hints and casual allusions. Mrs Ashurst, as he conjectured, had been left slenderly provided for on her fcushand’a death, and with far-sighted wisdom had used her little capital ia giving her girls a first-rate education in Europe, with a view to their becoming teachers. They : had but lately returned, and were not yet thoroughly at home in their own country ; but already Miss Ashurst was instructing large classes in French and German, and Amy giving music lessons to a number of pupils. Their evenings they kept for the enjoyment of each other and of the little homo which they so valued ; and entering into the cpirit of this life, so bravely busy, yet so tranquilly content, Alex realised for the first time what the charm of home may be, where each inmate has independent occupation, but where ail interests are shared and united as only they can be in those hemes where love ia lord and king. He dined duly with * the other Ashursts’, and duly paid hia ‘ digestion visit, 1 but there the acquaintance rested. The insipidity of mere fashionable intercourse struck him so keenly, as contrasted with the domestic life he had just learned to understand ; the elaborate graces taught ia wordly schools seemed so poor and shallow compared with ‘the maid, tbo musio,breathing in the face,’ of Amy, that it struck him as sheer waste of time to devote his hours to them.

‘Who would care for a doll, though its clothes were of lace. And its petticoats trimmed in the fashion ?’ Ha hummed to himself, as he walked home after his second call at ic 14 ; and froaa henceforward he gave himself up with heart and soul to the cultivation of his -happy accident.’ Undo Nat was grievously disappointed when his favorite nephew, after a stay in Philadelphia so prolonged as to justify his most sanguine hopes, wrote to announce his engagement to an entirely wrong Mias Ashurst. ‘A girl without a penny, sir, I give you my word,” and it was long before the old gentleman could forgiva the outrage. He never did forgiva it, in fact, till Mrs Alexander Ashe came to Boston in propria persona, and then she made such a conquest of Uncle Nat as left him nothing to say ha hia own justification or to the reproach o! hia nephew. He lived to thank Heaven for his own bad handwriting. ‘For,’as he would explain, ‘if the tails of my fives had been one whit less Indiatintt than they are, you would never have gose astray in Hemlock street that night, my boy, and we should never have had this little jewel of ours for our own, and a sad thing that would have been for us all —hey, now wouldn’t it V

To which Alax Asho replied, with emphasis, ‘Rather!’