CHAPTER XXIV.

The year was waning—­the year 1838—­when Edgar Poe removed his family from New York.  About the hour of noon, upon a pleasant day of the spring following, he might have been seen to turn from the paved streets of the “City of Brotherly Love,” and to enter, and walk briskly along, a grassy thoroughfare of Spring Garden—­a village-like suburb.

He was going home to Virginia and the Mother—­to a new home in this village which they had been first tempted to explore by its delightful name and which they had found seeing was to love, for in its appearance the name was justified.  The quiet streets were lined with trees just coming into leaf, in which birds were building, happy and unafraid, and spring flowers were blooming in little plots before many of the unpretentious homes.

The place also possessed a more practical attraction in the reasonableness of its house-rents.  Delightfully low was the price asked for a small, Dutch-roofed cottage that was just to their minds.  It was small, yet quite large enough to hold the three and their modest possessions, and about it hung a quaint charm that might have been wanting in a more ambitious abode.  Though in excellent preservation it had a pleasantly time-worn air and there was moss, in velvety green patches, on its sloping roof.  It was set somewhat back from the street, with a bit of garden spot in front of it, in whose rich soil violets and single hyacinths—­blue and white—­were blooming, and its square porch supported a climbing rose, heavy with buds, that only needed training to make it a bower of beauty.

After having tried several more or less unsatisfactory homes during their brief residence in Philadelphia, they felt that they had at last found one that filled their requirements, and had promptly moved in.  There were no servants—­maids would have been in the way they happily told each other—­but Virginia and her mother had positive genius for neatness and order.  At their touch things seemed to fly by magic into the places where they would look best and at the same time be most convenient, and it was astonishing how quickly the arrangement of their small belongings converted the cottage into a home.

It was with light heart and step that the master of the house took his way homeward to the mid-day meal.  The periodicals of the “City of Brotherly Love” were keeping him busy, and there was at that moment money in his pocket—­not much, but still it was money—­that day received for his latest story.

As he drew near a corner just around which his new roof-tree stood, he stopped suddenly—­in the attitude of one who listens.  Peal after peal of rippling laughter was filling the air with music.  In his vivid eyes, as he listened, shone the soft light of love and a smile of infinite tenderness played about his lips.  Well he knew from what lovely, girlish throat came the merry sounds—­sweet and clear as a chime of silver bells.  A quickened step brought him instantly in view of her and the cause of her mirth.