"I guess
when the Prince of Wales came to Elgin, Mother, he stayed
here," Lorne remarked, as a little boy. Secretly he and
Advena took up boards in more than one unused room, and
rapped on more than one thick wall to find a hollow
chamber; the house revealed so much that was interesting,
it was apparent to the meanest understanding that it must
hide even more. It was never half lighted, and there was
a passage in which fear dwelt--wild were the gallopades
from attic to cellar in the early nightfall, when every
young Murchison tore after every other, possessed, like
cats, by a demoniac ecstasy of the gloaming. And the
garden, with the autumn moon coming over the apple trees
and the neglected asparagus thick for ambush, and a casual
untrimmed boy or two with the delicious recommendation
of being utterly without credentials, to join in the rout
and be trusted to make for the back fence without further
hint at the voice of Mrs Murchison--these were joys of
the very fibre, things to push ideas and envisage life
with an attraction that made it worth while to grow up.
And they had all achieved it--all six. They had grown up
sturdily, emerging into sobriety and decorum by much the
same degrees as the old house, under John Murchison's
improving fortunes, grew cared for and presentable.
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