At breakfast I asked Rita to join me in a constitutional. The aunt spoke up, "Of course she will, I would go myself, but my lame foot forbids it."
I proposed going to the hotel to get a lunch.
"No! No!" the old lady said. "No! I will put you up a nice basket. In a few days you will take me out for a long promenade a voiture." I consented by a nod.
With basket in hand, we left the house early. My companion wore a charming but plain walking habit; a boy's straw hat sat jauntily on her head. I was sure I had never seen anything half so beautiful, as was this dark, yet fair young girl. Rita was a glorious walker. Hers was not the gliding swimming motion which in America and especially in the South, has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of female grace; but the light springing movement, with which fair Eve tripped over Eden's bloom bespangled glens, when she gathered flowers of every sweet odor and of every native tint to deck her bridal bed; when she tripped over nature's parterres and scarcely brushed away the dews sparkling on their wealth of fragrant bloom.
We walked and gaily chatted. She lost all the reserve, which since I became an inmate of her auntie's home had more or less marked her demeanor. She was the young village maiden, who had in artless innocence, at Boston's old frog pond, laughingly talked with the respectful stranger. But when our eyes met, her soul spoke unconsciously through them, telling me that she read my heart and was full of sympathy.
We reached a high tree-clad bluff, which overlooked a wide river bend. The sun was warm, but sent upon us no burning rays; rather shimmering his light through the leafy shade. Across the stream, a broad bottom lay, waving in grass and grain, and bright here and there with opening cotton bloom. We sat side by side on a fallen tree, and drank in the beauty of a picture painted from colors worked upon nature's pallette.
We descended toward the river bank to a pretty little spring which Rita had before oftentimes visited. We partook of the lunch Mrs. Allen had put up for us, or as Rita said, "for her gold paying lodger, who was a traveled savant."
She made the welkin ring with her merry laugh, as she took the wrapping paper from a dusty bottle of claret.
"Oh! my generous aunty! see, here is genuine Chateau Lafitte! I knew she had it, but I have seen a bottle of it but once on her table, and that was when President Polk dined with us, a good while ago. Poor aunty! You have surely bewitched her, Mr. Felden."
The lunch was delicious, and we did it ample justice. "See, Mr. Felden, here is real spring chicken broiled to a "T." Poor aunt; strangely inconsistent aunty. A lavish miser! a generous lover of self! A born epicure."