CHAPTER I.
AN ARRIVAL.
IT was one of the changing days of our Oldport midsummer. In the
morning it had rained in rather a dismal way, and Aunt Jane had said she
should put it in her diary. It was a very serious thing for the elements
when they got into Aunt Jane\'s diary. By noon the sun came out as clear
and sultry as if there had never been a cloud, the northeast wind died away,
the bay was motionless, the first locust of the summer shrilled from the
elms, and the robins seemed to be serving up butterflies hot for their
insatiable second brood, while nothing seemed desirable for a human
luncheon except ice-cream and fans. In the afternoon the southwest wind
came up the bay, with its line of dark-blue ripple and its delicious coolness;
while the hue of the water grew more and more intense, till we seemed to
be living in the heart of a sapphire.
The household sat beneath the large western doorway of the old
Maxwell House,--he rear door, which looks on the water. The house had
just been reoccupied by my Aunt Jane, whose great-grandfather had built
it, though it had for several generations been out of the family. I know no
finer specimen of those large colonial dwellings in which the genius of Sir
Christopher Wren bequeathed traditions of stateliness to our democratic
days. Its central hall has a carved archway; most of the rooms have
painted tiles and are wainscoted to the ceiling; the sashes are red-cedar, the
great staircase mahogany; there are pilasters with delicate Corinthian
capitals; there are cherubs\' heads and wings that go astray and lose
themselves in closets and behind glass doors; there are curling acanthusleaves
that cluster over shelves and ledges, and there are those graceful
shell-patterns which one often sees on old furniture, but rarely in houses.
The high front door still retains its Ionic cornice; and the western entrance,
looking on the bay, is surmounted by carved fruit and flowers, and is
crowned, as is the roof, with that pineapple in whose symbolic wealth the
rich merchants of the last century delighted.