It was a house of a very sober
pleasant countenance, that looked as if it had always been used to
have a large family in it; and there was a vine, with all its
beauteous leaves, trained all across the garden front, making a
pleasant green summer-blind over the higher half of the drawing-room
windows, that now stood open, telling of the emptiness within.
Christabel stood for a few moments looking round, and thinking what a
paradise of green rest this would be to her hard-worked father and
anxious mother; and how she should like to see her little brothers
and sisters have one free run and roll on that delicious greensward,
instead of now and then walking to one of the parks as a great
holiday. Yet hers was a very happy home, and, except her being
absent from it, nothing had befallen her to sadden her merry young
spirits; so when she heard the joyous cry behind her -
"I'm on Tommy Tittler's ground,
Picking up gold and silver,"
she turned about, and laughed as she saw the gold-finders stooping
and clawing at the grass, with eyes cast round about them for Hal,
who was pursuing Susan in and out, up and down till, with screams of
exultation, she was safely across the ridge of the bowling-green,
that served as "home.
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