The Argosy — page 286: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

207 Mk. LANDON. By THE AUTHOR OF “Mrs. JERNINGHAM’S JOURNAL.” i io loner whole family were assembled in the windows of the”sitting- room, to watch for Mabel’s return home. If the visit to her aunt’s had been an event, what was the coming back from it? It was only six weeks ago since Fanny and Ursula had helped to make the muslin dresses, and sew the lace on the pretty black silk mantle, which, to their unsophisticated eyes, seemed wonderful finery. Only six weeks since the schoolboy Herbert had flung one of nurse’s old shoes after the retreating carriage that bore away the eldest born, the universal favourite, friend, and darling, on her first visit from home. What an age they had imagined those six weeks, beforehand. How short a time they had seemed in passing—and now they were over, actually over, and Mabel was coming home. The expectation was joy, its fulfilment rapture. The slim, fair, smiling girl was amongst them once more, with an avalanche of brothers and sisters overwhelming her, the happy mother, having had the first kiss, serenely resigning her to their embraces. What a delightful party crowded round the tea-table, by-and-by. What questions, what answers, what talking of a dozen tongues at once, what bursts of laughter, what innocent joy! While one and all devoured the pretty creature with their eyes, and kept declaring that she was their own old Mabel, just the same as when she had left them. Only the mother looked into the blue eyes of her darling, and in their transparent depths saw something that sent a thrill through her matronly heart, with the certainty that she was wot the same, and would never through all her life be “‘just the same” again. The first moment they were alone together—and that was not till the tired little maiden had been conducted into her bed-room by her adoring sisters, and at last left to go to her bed—the anxious mother, full of hopes and fears, had glided into it. In that first moment, then, she slid her arms round her daughter, and whispered, ‘‘ Have you anything to tell me?” | The sweet face, all one blush, was hidden on her shoulder. ' “Oh yes, mamma—yes.” Then the mother felt that her darling was hers no longer, and that a new life—full, she trusted, of a higher and deeper happiness than the innocent past—was prepared for her child. Oh, that it might be covered with roses and sunshine; that true love might illumine it. But all she said to her child was, with tender caresses, ‘‘ Who is it?” COMMICOOOKS.c©