The room contained little else in the way of furniture, except a few
extra chairs, and a malacca-joint cane, with an ivory head, which stood
in a corner near the door. It produced an impression at once of
cleanliness and disorder, therein bearing a strong analogy to the
professor's own person and habits; and the disorder was of such a kind,
that, although no rule or system in the arrangement of any thing was
perceptible, Professor Valeyon would have been at once and almost
instinctively aware of any alteration that might have been made, however
slight.
On entering the study, the old gentleman first shuffled up to the
fireplace, flapping the heels of his slippers behind him as he went, and
deposited his pipe on the mantel-piece. Next, he put on his straw hat,
and, turning to the engraving of the Transfiguration, which had served
him as a looking-glass almost ever since it had hung there, he put
himself to rights, with his usual fierce scowlings, liftings of the
chin, and jerkings at collar and stock. When every thing seemed in
proper trim, he took his ivory-headed cane from its place in the corner,
and made his way along the entry to the front door.
"Bless me!" ejaculated the professor, as he emerged upon the porch,
shading his eyes from the white dazzle of the road; "how hot it is, sure
enough!" Scarcely had he spoken, however, when the sun, which had been
coquetting for the last half-hour with the majestic white cloud which
Cornelia had idly watched from the balcony, suddenly plunged his burning
face right into its cool, soft bosom, and immediately a clear, gray
shadow gently took possession of the landscape.
"Humph!" grunted the professor again, turning a sharp, wise eye to the
westward, "we shall have a thunder-shower before long. I must take the
covered wagon. But how's this? I declare I've forgotten to change my
slippers! I'm growing old--I'm growing old, that's certain!"
As the old gentleman stood, shaking his head over this new symptom of
approaching senility, he happened to turn his eyes in the direction of
the village, and descried a figure approaching rapidly from the turn in
the road, which at once arrested his attention.
"Who can that be?" muttered he to himself, frowning to assist his
vision. "None of the town boys, that's certain. Never saw such a figure
but once before! If any thing, this is the better man of the two.
By-the-way, what if it should be--! Humph! I believe it is, sure
enough."
By this time the stranger, a very tall and broadly built young man, with
a close brown beard, and quick, comprehensive eyes, had arrived opposite
the house, and stood with one hand on the gate.
"Is this the parsonage?" demanded he, speaking with great rapidity of
utterance, and turning his head half sideways as he spoke, without,
however, removing his eyes from the professor's face.