The Hungerford family, after uncle John had been solemnly and ceremoniously committed to the tomb, returned to Poppleton. Everything had a kind of unsubstantial look to them, as though they had been suddenly lifted from the cares and trials of this sublunary sphere to a region of golden clouds which were very beautiful to look upon, but which would not bear the solid tramp of mortal feet. Whereas they had gone to Baltimore, ten days before, in very moderate and even humble circumstances, now they were rolling in wealth; at least the will of the late John Hungerford had so declared them to be, though they found it exceedingly difficult to realize the stupendous change which had come over them. They reached Poppleton with all these doubts unsolved, and with these cloudy sensations still hanging about them. Mrs. Hungerford was the most practical person of the three. She was a well-educated, well-informed lady, who knew something of books, and a great deal of the world. She had brought up her little family on three hundred dollars a year, and she had necessarily been a very practical person; but as she journeyed home from Baltimore, she was troubled with a dread lest the golden clouds should suddenly roll away, the misty curtain be lifted, and the bright dream of ease, luxury, and happiness be dissipated even before she had tasted its sweetness. Twenty thousand dollars had been left to her, independently of all contingencies; and this to a woman of high aims, who had been struggling all her life with the inconveniences of a small income, was a fortune in itself. By degrees, as the train thundered along towards her home, she reasoned herself into the belief that her own legacy and that of her daughter were as real as the solid earth beneath them. Of the golden clouds, the silver fountains, and the glittering mists from Pactolian streams, that enveloped her son Eugene, she had not the courage to think. Her own little fortune was large enough and suggestive enough to satisfy the highest flights of her imagination.