THUS, summers and winters passed by, carrying Louie along the road of daily life with its ups and downs, its lights and shadows, its smooth paths and rough places, until one day a very new place was reached; at least it was outwardly a new place, but it was not yet that place which Louie needed to reach, where all things are new. This was a new country, but where, with all its novelties, she would find the same perplexities, the same dangers and disappointments as on any other part of this sin-spoiled earth.
This new country was so far from the home among the hills and rush-fields that it required a journey of two days to reach it; but I must tell you that one member of the party, who had taken the former journey to a new home, was missing—this was Pussy; yes; poor, pretty white Pussy had also become willful, wandering Pussy, and, like many willful ones before her, had come to a sad end. She had taken many walks with the children to the hill cottages, and perhaps this had unsettled her mind, so that she found it dull even to remain for two days together quietly at home, and so, as the expeditions to the hill were not frequent enough to please her restless will, she had taken to visiting on her own account where she was neither invited nor wished for. For this impropriety she had been often punished, but alas! all the punishment was useless, either to mend Pussy's manners, or to save her from the fate which overtook her. As soon as she got over her punishment she re-commenced her wanderings, returning to her home when she pleased, and I dare say, like willful people, she thought that she could always do as she pleased, but it was not so: once more she went out, day after day passed and she was still away; search and inquiries were made, but brought no signs and no tidings of Pussy, until one day she was discovered, lying dead, in a lonely spot on the sea shore.
This sad ending to her favorite had cost Louie a good many tears, but it had happened long before the removal, and I don't think the arrival at the new country was clouded by any recollections of poor, white Pussy.
There was so much before the children at that moment, that there was scarcely a glance to spare for anything behind. The release from the steamboat was in itself a pleasant prospect, for though it was a fine May day, the boat had trembled and tossed enough to make it a very undesirable abode to some, even for the short space of two hours, and a little extra tossing as they crossed the bar made the sight of the two long, wooden piers, between which they were to steam smoothly to the place of landing, all the more welcome. The water between these piers certainly was calm, but no calmness was to be found anywhere else; such shouting and screaming from those on land, such hurrying to and fro, such pulling of ropes, such crowding and hallooing; you might have thought it was the first time a steamer had ever reached that spot, but in reality the great event was one of every-day occurrence. Everybody on board the steamer seemed anxious to be the very first to leave it, but as only a few people could pass slowly, one by one, over the little railed ladder which led to the place of landing, patience had to be exercised, or at any rate waiting had to be endured, and thus the children found themselves, not among the first, but rather the last who left the boat: then, ropes on each side of them conducted them, whether they would or not, up to the door of a bare-looking building which was in front of them. Some stern-looking officials stood on the steps of this building and bade them enter, and Louie knew very well what they were sent in there for, and felt half amused and half indignant at the prospect before her.
This bare-looking building was the Custom House, and there all the passengers had to be searched lest they should have, concealed upon their persons, anything which they ought rather to show to the officers and pay duty upon. Louie wondered very much, knowing nothing about the laws or necessities of trade as it then was, why the French people should object to your bringing new English goods to their shores, and why people should be so anxious to have the very things they were not allowed to bring, or why, at least, the people could not trust one another. She remembered the stories she had heard of how persons had concealed penknives, needles, scissors and other most unpleasant additions to wearing apparel among their clothes, and one lady had even worn a bag containing gunpowder beneath her dress. Whether Louie looked like one having a taste for forbidden supplies of knives and gunpowder I cannot say, but she and the other children were received by some woman in a little side room of the Custom House; there, their hats were taken off and the linings well examined, their jackets followed and even their dresses; their pockets were turned inside out and still the search went on, and Louie was beginning to wonder what next she should lose when the woman appeared satisfied and began to restore to her her clothes, much to her satisfaction; but it was some time before they reached the street and could continue their journey through the town. The noise and bustle outside was still going on, and the screaming being mostly in French made it sound all the more strange, though any such bustle would have been a novelty to these little country folks. Mingled with the strange voices there was a clatter of multitudes of wooden shoes on the smooth, marble pavement, the wooden shoe costume being completed by blue or violet stockings, bright scarlet petticoats, white caps and little colored shawls; but the house prepared for them was reached at last, and the sitting-room might have seemed much like any other they had been in except that the carpet, to give it a feeling of softness to which by nature it had no right, was under-lined with a thick layer of straw; this made it difficult and, as the children thought, very funny to walk upon. Vain would have been any efforts now from the camel and buffalo to awake a business-like clatter; even the children, with all the running hither and thither which unpacking and settling into a new abode necessitated, could neither hear nor produce the sound of a single footfall.
This strangely carpeted apartment was only one which received them for a short time, and a little later they were all so settled in their ordinary routine that you would scarcely have believed that they had come to a new home at all. There was no field near this new abode, and, on the whole, its chief feature, I think, was lessons: these increased so much that even those in the schoolroom, which had so far outdone the studies in Marine Villa, would have been thought very little of. Miss R. was now assisted by several masters, and Louie had to do her full share in preparing the lessons and exercises which alone would satisfy these frequent and most persevering visitors: this left her, perhaps, less time for reading and thinking than she had formerly had, and sometimes, for days together, her mind seemed wholly taken up with the things which are seen and which are temporal.
Even the persevering masters required some rest and had many other pupils in other houses, and among all the lessons the children yet found time, especially in wet weather, to make very diligent use of a large, bare room which ended on one side in a wide glass door and which was called the playroom; and certainly, whatever else in this world may have been misnamed or misused, this apartment was exceedingly well-named and well-used, for unless a housemaid found a little occupation there occasionally, no business of any kind ever was carried on between its walls. There, the girls swung and the boys climbed ropes which hung from the ceiling, and both boys and girls played many wonderful games which at this time were generally of a warlike kind and had an historical foundation. I fear that the old friends, the elephant, camel, and buffalo, who had reigned in the nursery at Marine Villa, had no place allotted to them here, and would have been quite unequal to any of the requirements of this new playroom.
In fine weather, the children's leisure time was generally spent in walking, and there were, round this new home, many places of interest to be seen; the ramparts, just such as those read of in history, were a favorite resort. These great rampart walls were many, many feet in height, and the whole distance round them was more than a mile; the outer edge of the great wall was four or five feet thick, and the great walk round the top was several yards wide. From this high walk the whole of that part of the town which was outside the walls could be seen, as well as several miles of country up the river, and when you passed through the great turreted gateways, whose heavy wooden doors were now never shut, because it was a time of peace, it was easy to fancy what the sieges told of in history must have been like; how the people from outside houses would be anxious to flock within the safe enclosure, how hopeless must have been the task of attempting to break through those gigantic walls, and yet how terrible the condition of those within, when bolts and bars kept them tightly shut up, while the hundreds of soldiers in the plains without prevented any approach of friends or food to the unhappy prisoners within the city.
Saturday afternoons (instead of taking the usual walk) the children were allowed to spend in the garden, and here they found much occupation, though not of the kind usually supposed to engage persons in a garden. This garden was not large, and being exactly shut in by three high stone walls, the fourth side being enclosed by the back of the house, it was not, in itself, a very interesting place. A narrow bed skirted the walls on each of the three sides, but the beds were greatly taken up with the growth of large pear-trees; and though the pears were very abundant and acceptable, they did not offer much occupation or interest, except at the time when they were ripe; but the children found means to make themselves very busy notwithstanding. The back of the house ended in a square terrace, paved with large flagstones, which led by a long flight of steps down into the garden; and under the terrace and a portion of the house was a large empty vault, at least it was supposed to be empty, but it was afterward discovered that a company of rats had taken it on lease without either asking leave or paying rent. The front wall of this vault, together with the side wall of the flight of steps, made such a very nice half square that it gave the children, for want of other garden employment, the thought of building two other walls and roofing in the whole so as to form a little house. Quite a strong, real house it was meant to be, and it rose before their imaginations as a most commodious and agreeable dwelling, the only misgiving being lest their elders should not perceive its great advantages, and so should object to the idea of their occupying it permanently, but the building was begun in good earnest. Much labor was necessary, for, except a few stones that were found lying around and within the vault, all that was needed for this important building had to be fetched from a lonely beach which was nearly two miles distant—the mortar, too, was obtained from the same place. A mason might have objected to the use of this mortar, which was nothing else than soft clay: it was abundant among the rocks on the beach, but it was hard work to dig it up in great lumps and to fill the barrows with it, and it took a long time then to wheel it home all the way from the distant shore; so, as on most days of the week their time was too limited to allow the whole afternoon which was necessary for these expeditions, one Saturday had to be spent in bringing materials and the next in building them together. Many a stone, too, got laid in its bed of soft clay at odd moments during the week, and so the walls rose to quite an imposing height and the doorway appeared; but I fear that the work—being performed by so many masons, each of whom directed himself (or herself!) according to his own desires—presented a rather irregular appearance.
All this time winter was hurrying on, and this year he brought in his train such cold winds, severe frosts, and heavy snows that even the children preferred the already roofed and finished house to their garden mansion, and so that came by degrees to be deserted; it was never roofed, and by spring-time little remained of all their labors but a ruined heap.