Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/80

 sweet-faced, silent, young woman, busy that the Ingram mansion might be in every way hospitable toward its guest.

"There was an old black woman," Mr. Bolliver remembered.

"That would be Amelia, Ellen," Miss Lucia said.

"Ah, such biscuits!" Mr. Bolliver sighed.

"I recall thinking, 'I'll not taste such biscuits in China!' And the planked shad with bacon in him!"

"Fancy remembering what there was for dinner!" Miss Ellen murmured.

"How could I forget? I that was not to eat New England fare for twenty years! Yes, and the bowl of apple-blossoms in the candle-light, and your brother, Mark, asking the grace in his quarter-deck voice."

The drawing-room had been bright with candles that night, and Miss Ellen played upon the piano and Miss Lucia sang. Bart Bolliver had sung, too—this time it was the aunts who reminded him. Such a sweet tenor! Did he ever sing now? No, Mr. Bolliver's singing was over, he told them, like many another thing. Mark Ingram had not been of the gay