Chapter 2 - Page 2

times; at
others, more meaning. It is scarcely necessary to say that both had
that delicacy of outline which seems almost inseparable from the female
form in this country. What was, perhaps, more usual in that day among
persons of their class than it is in our own, each spoke her own
language with an even graceful utterance, and a faultless accuracy of
pronunciation, equally removed from effort and provincialisms. As the
Dutch was in very common use then, at Albany, and most females of Dutch
origin had a slight touch of their mother tongue in their enunciation
of English, this purity of dialect in the two girls was to be ascribed
to the fact that their father was an Englishman by birth; their mother
an American of purely English origin, though named after a Dutch god-
mother; and the head of the school in which they had now been three
years, was a native of London, and a lady by habits and education.

"Now, Maud," cried the captain, after he had kissed the forehead, eyes
and cheeks of his smiling little favourite--"Now, Maud, I will set you
to guess what good news I have for you and Beulah."

"You and mother don't mean to go to that bad Beave Manor this summer,
as some call the ugly pond?" answered the child, quick as lightning.

"That is kind of you, my darling; more kind than prudent; but you are
not right."

"Try Beulah, now," interrupted the mother, who, while she too doted on
her youngest child, had an increasing respect for the greater solidity
and better judgment of her sister: "let us hear Beulah's guess."

"It is something about my brother, I know by mother's eyes," answered
the eldest girl, looking inquiringly into Mrs. Willoughby's face.

"Oh! yes," cried Maud, beginning to jump about the room, until she
ended her saltations in her father's arms--"Bob has got his
commission!--I know it all well enough, now--I would not thank you to
tell me--I know it all now--_dear_ Bob, how he _will_ laugh!
and how happy I am!"

"Is it so, mother?" asked Beulah, anxiously, and without even a smile.

"Maud is right; Bob is an ensign--or, will be one, in a day or two. You
do not seem pleased, my child?"

"I wish Robert were not a soldier, mother. Now he will be always away,
and we shall never see him; then he may be obliged to fight, and who
knows how unhappy it may make _him_?"

Beulah thought more of her brother than she did of herself; and, sooth
to say, her mother had many of the child's misgivings. With Maud it was
altogether different: she saw only the bright side of the picture; Bob
gay and brilliant, his face covered with smiles, his appearance admired