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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- 1121
- text
- many dresses in her wardrobe, and how many rings upon her fingers;
cheerfully would I let the genealogists, tax-gatherers, and upholsterers
attend to that. My proper province is with the angelical part of Lucy.
But as in some quarters, there prevails a sort of prejudice against
angels, who are merely angels and nothing more; therefore I shall
martyrize myself, by letting such gentlemen and ladies into some details
of Lucy Tartan's history.
She was the daughter of an early and most cherished friend of Pierre's
father. But that father was now dead, and she resided an only daughter
with her mother, in a very fine house in the city. But though her home
was in the city, her heart was twice a year in the country. She did not
at all love the city and its empty, heartless, ceremonial ways. It was
very strange, but most eloquently significant of her own natural
angelhood that, though born among brick and mortar in a sea-port, she
still pined for unbaked earth and inland grass. So the sweet linnet,
though born inside of wires in a lady's chamber on the ocean coast, and
ignorant all its life of any other spot; yet, when spring-time comes, it
is seized with flutterings and vague impatiences; it can not eat or
drink for these wild longings. Though unlearned by any experience, still
the inspired linnet divinely knows that the inland migrating time has
come. And just so with Lucy in her first longings for the verdure. Every
spring those wild flutterings shook her; every spring, this sweet
linnet girl did migrate inland. Oh God grant that those other and long
after nameless flutterings of her inmost soul, when all life was become
weary to her--God grant, that those deeper flutterings in her were
equally significant of her final heavenly migration from this heavy
earth.
It was fortunate for Lucy that her Aunt Lanyllyn--a pensive, childless,
white-turbaned widow--possessed and occupied a pretty cottage in the
village of Saddle Meadows; and still more fortunate, that this excellent
old aunt was very partial to her, and always felt a quiet delight in
having Lucy near her. So Aunt Lanyllyn's cottage, in effect, was Lucy's.
And now, for some years past, she had annually spent several months at
Saddle Meadows; and it was among the pure and soft incitements of the
country that Pierre first had felt toward Lucy the dear passion which
now made him wholly hers.
Lucy had two brothers; one her senior, by three years, and the other her
junior by two. But these young men were officers in the navy; and so
they did not permanently live with Lucy and her mother.
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