CHAPTER XXI.
POLLY.
The lodge stood in a very lovely place, upon a slope of ground, which rose still higher to where the colonel's grand house was situated.

There was a porch before the door, built of rough logs of pines, covered with ivy and honeysuckle, and with seats in it, where you could sit and look out over a wide, rich plain, with little hills and dales in it, stretching far away towards the sky-line, where some distant mountains lay, so like to clouds, that you could scarcely tell which were soft and misty vapours, and which were solid and everlasting hills.

The Severn ran through the beautiful plain with so many windings, sometimes lying in shadow under deep banks, and sometimes glistening and sparkling in the sunlight, that it looked more like many little pools scattered about the meadows than one long, continuous river.

Not very far away, as Raleigh had said, stood the Wrekin, purple in the evening haze, but by day so plain, that one could see the great rock on its summit, which in olden times served as an altar to the god of fire.
Susan was very busy, and had been very busy all day over two things--preparing the house for the reception of her father, whom she had not seen for so many years, and in teaching her little girl, who was now eighteen months old, to say grand-pa.

The one work was quite finished; everything was ready for old Oliver, and now she was waiting and watching to see the colonel's spring cart arrive from the station with her husband, who was gone to meet old Oliver and Tony.