CHAPTER VI.
AN OLD FRIEND WITH A NEW NAME
"Now, children, here we are at Kirklands, at last," said a lady with a
pleasant voice, to an eager-looking group of boys and girls, who were
clustering round her, in a large open travelling carriage, which had
just drawn up in front of an old gateway, and waited for admittance.
"Kirklands at last," was re-echoed among the little party. The two boys
seated beside the coachman glanced round at the occupants of the inside
seats, feeling sure that, their higher position secured them superior
information, and shouted in chorus, "Mamma, mamma, Kirklands at last."
"As if we didn't know that as well as you do," shouted back Willie, a
curly-headed little fellow, seated beside his mother, who had a secret
hankering after the higher place of his elder brothers, along with a
desire to prove to them that their position was in no way superior to
his own.
The old gates closed behind them, and the carriage bowled swiftly along
the smooth avenue, with its branching elms overhead. The pleasant vistas
of green, on all sides, were very grateful to the eyes of the young
travellers, wearied with miles of a white dusty turnpike-road, on a hot
July afternoon. They looked with delighted gaze on the new fair scene,
and thought what happy evenings they would have among those green glades
during the long summer days.
But there was one of the party to whom this scene was not new, but old
and familiar, written over with many memories, some well-nigh overlaid
in the turmoil of life, but which flickered up with new vividness as she
looked on the calm sunlighted scene, and thought of other days.
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