A smothered wail from beneath the bed-clothes now met her ear, and, turning down the blankets, she discovered two red-faced, bald-headed babies, wrapped in swaddling-clothes. She started back aghast.
"What are those things--what are those things?" she demanded, hysterically, pointing to the infant strangers.
"Simcoe's children!" groaned the pale lady-doctor, turning uneasily away from the little things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies _can_ make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse than when she left him, and the doctor pronounced it a case of brain fever, which would require the nicest care and nursing.
Thus a wet blanket was most audaciously thrown upon the Woman's Rights' Reform, which was fain to arrest its progress in Wimbledon for a while. We shall see how long.
"Thy hands are filled with early flowers, Thy step is on the wind; The innocent and keen delight Of youth is on thy mind; That glad fresh feeling that bestows Itself the gladness which it knows, The pure, the undefined; And thou art in that happy hour Of feeling's uncurbed, early power."
The spring dawned bright and beautiful over Wimbledon, and when the first blue-birds sang on the budding boughs, and the grass was springing green in streets and by-ways, the tenants of "Summer Home" returned; and a bright young girl, with dark abundant hair hanging in a rich profusion of shiny ringlets over her white, uncovered shoulders, was seen skipping lightly through the gardens and grounds, pruning shrubs, transplanting flowers, and training truant vines over arbors and alcoves.
It was Florence Howard, resplendent in the light of her girlish beauty, and buoyant overflow of health and happiness. Often, in her morning strolls, she noticed a tall, graceful boy, in a blue frock-coat, with a shining morocco cap placed over a head of light curly hair, passing along, satchel in hand, to the seminary on the hill, and every night she saw him disappear within the forest that lay to the northward of her father's residence.