Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/26

18 18 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel, and which, though it was short and well-lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had been in the house, at different periods, as a child ; in those days her grandmother lived there. Then there had been an absence of ten years, followed by a return to Albany before her father's death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer, had exer- cised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large hospitality in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeks under her roof weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The manner of life was different from that of her own home larger, more plentiful, more sociable; the discipline of the nursery was delightfully vague, and the opportunity of listening to the con- versation of one's elders (which with Isabel was a highly-valued pleasure) almost unbounded. There was a constant coming and going ; her grandmother's sons and daughters, and their children, appeared to be in the enjoyment of standing invitations to stay with her, so that the house offered, to a certain extent, the appear- ance of a bustling provincial inn, kept by a gentle old landlady who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill. Isabel, of course, knew nothing about bills ; but even as a child she thought her grandmother's dwelling picturesque. There was a covered piazza behind it, furnished with a swing, which was a source of tremulous interest ; and beyond this w.as a long garden, sloping down to the stable, and containing certain capital peach-tre'es. Isabel had stayed with her grandmother at various seasons ; but, somehow, all her visits had a flavour of peaches. On the other side, opposite, across the street, was an old house that was called the Dutch House a, peculiar structure, dating from the earliest colonial time, composed of bricks that had been painted yellow, crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers, defended by a rickety wooden paling, and standing sidewise to the street. It was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, kept in an amateurish manner by a demonstrative lady, of whom Isabel's chief recollection was that her hair was puft'ed out very much at the temples and that she was the widow of some one of consequence. The little girl had been offered the opportunity of laying A foundation of knowledge in this establishment ; but having spent a single day in it, she had expressed great disgust with the place, and had been allowed to stay at home, where in the September days, when the windows of the Dutch Housa were open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating the multiplication table an incident in which the elation of liberty and the pain of exclusion were indistin^uishably mingled.