It seemed as if they had resolved to try their utmost to make the new home to which he came, or rather was driven, a pleasant home, and to bind him to it with cords of love, the only cords worth any thing, though sometimes--Heaved knows why--even they fail, and are snapped and thrown aside like straws.
Whenever Elizabeth went in and out of the parlor she always heard lively talk going on among the family; Ascott making his jokes, telling about his college life, and planning his life to come as a surgeon in full practice, on the most extensive scale.

And when she brought in the chamber candles, she saw him kiss his aunts affectionately, and even help his Aunt Johanna--who looked frightfully pale and tired, but smiling still--to her bed-room door.
"You'll not sit up long, my dear?
No reading to night ?" said she, anxiously.
"Not a bit of it.

And I'll be up with the lark to-morrow morning.

I really will auntie.

I'm going to turn over a new leaf, you know." She smiled again at the immemorial joke, kissed and blessed him, and the door shut up on her and Hilary.
Ascott descended to the parlor, threw himself on the sofa with an air of great relief, and an exclamation of satisfaction that "the women" were all gone.