delivering the
aforesaid oration from memory, on the stage of the Grand Opera House,
to a warm-hearted and perspiring audience of his towns-people, amid
tremendous applause and not the slightest prod-dings of conscience.
Really the speech deserved the applause; Mrs. Carriswood, who had heard
half the eloquence of the world, spent three evenings on it; and she has
a good memory.
Her part in the affair always amused her; though, in fact, it came to
pass easily. She had the great fortune of the family. Being a widow with
no children, and the time not being come when philanthropy beckons on
the right hand and on the left to free-handed women, Mrs. Carriswood
travelled. As she expressed it, she was searching the globe for a
perfect climate. "Not that I in the least expect to find it," said she,
cheerfully, "but I like to vary my disappointments; when I get worn out
being frozen, winters, I go somewhere to be soaked." She was on her way
to California this time, with her English maid, who gave the Lossing
domestics many a jolly moment by her inextinguishable panic about red
Indians. Mrs. Derry supposed these savages to be lurking on the prairie
outside every Western town; and almost fainted when she did chance
to turn the corner upon three Kickapoo Indians, splendid in paint and
feathers, and peacefully vending the "Famous Kickapoo Sagwa." She had
others of the artless notions of the travelling English, and I fear that
they were encouraged not only by the cook, the "second girl," and the
man-of-all-work, but by Harry and his chum, Tommy; I know she used to
tell how she saw tame buffalo "roosting" on the streets, "w'ich they do
look that like common cows a body couldn't tell 'em hapart!"
She had a great opinion of Tommy, a mystery to her mistress for a long
time, until one day it leaked out that Tommy "and Master Harry, too,"
had told her that Tommy's great-grandfather was a lord in the old
country.
"The family seem to have sunk in the world since, Derry," was Mrs.
Carriswood's single remark, as she smiled to herself. After Derry was
dismissed she picked up a letter, written that day to a friend of hers,
and read some passages about Harry and Tommy, smiling again.
"Harry"--one may look over her pretty shoulder without impertinence, in
a story--"Harry," she wrote, "is a boy that I long to steal. Just the
kind of boy we have both wanted, Sarah--frank, happy, affectionate. I
must tell you something about him. It came out
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