After shaking the dust from my travelling dress, and slaking my thirst from the big gourd shell (my special delight), which hung by the side of a bucket of cool water which stood on a little stand in the parlor, I inquired for some one who would take to Mrs. Lansing my card, and thus apprise her of my arrival. The landlord immediately summoned a bright, handsome mulatto boy, who, after receiving my orders, and favoring me with a sight of his ivories, started off bare-headed, and for that matter bare-bodied too, for Cedar Grove, which the landlord pointed out to me in the distance, and which, with its dense surroundings of trees, looked to me delightfully cool and pleasant. After waiting rather impatiently for an hour or more, a large, old-fashioned carriage, drawn by two rather poor-looking horses, stopped before the door. It belonged to Mrs. Lansing; and the footman, jumping down from the rack behind, handed me a note, in which the lady begged me to come directly to her house, saying she was herself indisposed, or she would have come down to meet me, and also adding, that if I would excuse her she would rather not see me until supper-time, when she hoped to feel better. At the extremity of Main street, we turned in at a ponderous gate, and after passing through two or three fields or lawns, stopped at last in front of Cedar Grove, which stood upon a slight eminence overlooking the town. In perfect delight I gazed around me, for it seemed the embodiment of my childish dreams, and involuntarily I exclaimed, “This is indeed the sunny, sunny South.” It was very beautiful, that spacious yard and garden, with their winding walks on which no ray of sunlight fell, so securely were they shaded, by the cedar and the fir, the catalpa, the magnolia, and the fig tree, most of them seen now by me for the first time in all their natural beauty, reminded one so forcibly of Eden. The house itself was a large, square building, surrounded on three sides by a piazza, which I afterwards found was the family sitting-room; it being there that they congregated both morning and evening. The building had once been white, but the paint was nearly all worn off, and it now presented a rather dilapidated appearance, with its broken shutters and decayed pillars, round which vines and ivy were twining. The floors within were bare, but scrupulously clean; while the rooms lacked the costly furniture I had confidently expected to see. Scarcely was I seated in the parlor, when I heard a sweet, childish voice exclaim, “She’s in _thar_—she is,” while at the same time a pair of soft, blue eyes looked through the crevice of the door, and then were quickly withdrawn, their owner laughing aloud as if she had accomplished some daring feat, and calling out, “I seen her, Hal—I did. And she don’t look cross neither. You dassn’t peek in thar, dast you?”