My Lady Brandon and the Widow Jim

When it was known that we had arrived in Deephaven, the people who had known Miss Brandon so well, and Mrs. Lancaster also, seemed to consider themselves Kate’s friends by inheritance, and were exceedingly polite to us, in either calling upon us or sending pleasant messages.  Before the first week had ended we had no lack of society.  They were not strangers to Kate, to begin with, and as for me, I think it is easy for me to be contented, and to feel at home anywhere.  I have the good fortune and the misfortune to belong to the navy,—­that is, my father does,—­and my life has been consequently an unsettled one, except during the years of my school life, when my friendship with Kate began.

I think I should be happy in any town if I were living there with Kate Lancaster.  I will not praise my friend as I can praise her, or say half the things I might say honestly.  She is so fresh and good and true, and enjoys life so heartily.  She is so child-like, without being childish; and I do not tell you that she is faultless, but when she makes mistakes she is sorrier and more ready to hopefully try again than any girl I know.  Perhaps you would like to know something about us, but I am not writing Kate’s biography and my own, only telling you of one summer which we spent together.  Sometimes in Deephaven we were between six and seven years old, but at other times we have felt irreparably grown-up, and as if we carried a crushing weight of care and duty.  In reality we are both twenty-four, and it is a pleasant age, though I think next year is sure to be pleasanter, for we do not mind growing older, since we have lost nothing that we mourn about, and are gaining so much.  I shall be glad if you learn to know Kate a little in my stories.  It is not that I am fond of her and endow her with imagined virtues and graces; no one can fail to see how unaffected she is, or not notice her thoughtfulness and generosity and her delightful fun, which never has a trace of coarseness or silliness.  It was very pleasant having her for one’s companion, for she has an unusual power of winning people’s confidence, and of knowing with surest instinct how to meet them on their own ground.  It is the girl’s being so genuinely sympathetic and interested which makes every one ready to talk to her and be friends with her; just as the sunshine makes it easy for flowers to grow which the chilly winds hinder.  She is not polite for the sake of seeming polite, but polite for the sake of being kind, and there is not a particle of what Hugh Miller justly calls the insolence of condescension about her; she is not brilliantly talented, yet she does everything in a charming fashion of her own; she is not profoundly learned, yet she knows much of which many wise people are ignorant, and while she is a patient scholar in both little things and great, she is no less a teacher to all her friends,—­dear Kate Lancaster!