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Page 7
"You little rascal!" cried the girl; and then she caught sight of
Hildegarde. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" she cried, hastily. "I didn't
know,--I was looking for my brother--"
"Oh, please come up!" cried Hildegarde, running to the fence.
"Please come over! Oh, you mustn't hang by your hands that way;
you'll get splinters in them. You are Miss Merryweather, and I am
Hildegarde Grahame; so now we are introduced, and let me help you
over, do!"
Hildegarde delivered this breathlessly, and held out both hands to
help the stranger; but the latter, with a frank smile and a nod,
drew herself up without more ado, perched on the top of the fence,
then sprang lightly to the ground.
"Thank you so much!" she said, warmly, taking Hildegarde's
outstretched hand. "Of course I didn't know I was trespassing, but
I'm glad I came. And oh, what a lovely place! I didn't know there
was such a place out of a book. Oh, the hedges! and the brook! and
the trees! How can it be real?"
Hildegarde nodded in delight. "Yes!" she said. "That is just the
way I felt when I first saw the place. It was some time before I
could feel it right to come here without apologizing to the
ghosts."
"Your ancestors' ghosts?" said Bell Merryweather, inquiringly.
"Aren't they your own ghosts? Haven't you lived here always?"
Hildegarde explained that the place had belonged to a cousin of
her mother's, who left it to her at his death.
"Oh!" said Miss Merryweather; then she considered a little, with
her head on one side. Hildegarde decided that, though not a
beauty, the new-comer had one of the pleasantest faces she had
ever seen.
"On the whole," the girl went on, "I am rather glad that my theory
was wrong. The truth is less romantic, but it makes you much more
real and accessible, which is, after all, desirable in a country
neighbourhood."
"Do tell me what you mean!" cried Hildegarde.
Miss Merryweather laughed.
"If you are quite sure you won't mind?" she said, tentatively.
"Well, your place is so beautiful,--even apart from this--this--
bower of nymphs,--it is so shadowed with great trees, and so green
with old turf, that when I saw you this morning walking under the
tree, I made up a romance about you,--a pretty little romance. You
are quite sure you don't mind? You were the last of an ancient
family, and you were very delicate, and your mother kept you in
this lovely solitude, hoping to preserve your precious life. And
now," she burst into a clear peal of laughter, in which Hildegarde
joined heartily, "now I see you near, and you are no more delicate
than I am, and you are not the last of an ancient family. At
least, I hope you are not," she cried, growing suddenly grave.
"Oh! do you like to make romances?" cried Hildegarde, with ready
tact waiving the last question. "It is my delight, too. No, I am
not in the least delicate, as you say, and we have only been here
two years, my mother and I; yet it seems like home, and I hope we
shall always live here now. And are you beginning to feel at all
settled in,--I don't know any name for your house; we have called
it just the 'Yellow House' as it had no special interest, being
uninhabited. But I suppose you will give it a name?"
"If we can decide on one!" said Bell Merryweather, laughing. "The
trouble is, there are so many of us to decide. I want to call it
Gamboge: brief, you see, and simple. But one boy says it must be
Chrome Castle, and another votes for Topaz Tower; so I don't know
how it will end."
"When I was a little girl," said Hildegarde, "I had a book, the
dearest little book, called 'Pumpkin House.' It was about--"
"Oh, DID you have 'Pumpkin House?'" cried Bell Merryweather,
eagerly. "Oh! wasn't it a darling? And didn't you think you never
could be perfectly happy till you could live in a pumpkin? And to
think of my forgetting it now, just when the opportunity has come!
Of course we shall call the new home Pumpkin House!"
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