“I mean this Gaylord. I mean the one who came after Samuel and Jean. Why isn’t—why didn’t——”
“Naughty boy,” said Ravenal, with his charming smile.
She actually yearned toward him then. He could not have said anything more calculated to bind his enchantment for her. They swayed toward each other over the top of the little glass-encased relic. Andy coughed hastily. They swayed gently apart. They were as though mesmerized.
“Folks out here in the churchyard?” inquired Andy, briskly, to break the spell. “Ravenal kin?”
“Acres of ’em,” Gaylord assured him, cheerfully. “Son of . . . and daughter of . . . and beloved father of. . . . For that matter, there’s one just beside you.”
Andy side-stepped hastily, with a little exclamation. He cast a somewhat fearful glance at the spot toward which Ravenal so carelessly pointed. A neat gray stone slab set in the wall. Andy peered at the lettering it bore; stooped a little. “Here—you read it, Nollie. You’ve got young eyes.”
Her fresh young cheek so near the cold gray slab, she read in her lovely flexible voice:
Here lies the body of Mrs. Suzanne Ravenal, wife of Jean Baptista Ravenal Esqr., one of his Majesty’s Council and Surveyor General of the Lands of this Province, who departed this life Octr 19t 1765. Aged 37 Years. After labouring ten of them under the severest Bodily afflictions brought on by Change of Climate, and tho’ she went to her native land received no relief but returned and bore them with uncommon Resolution and Resignation to the last.
Magnolia rose, slowly, from the petals of her flounced skirt spread about her as she had stooped to read. “Poor darling!” Her eyes were soft with pity. Again the two seemed to sway a little toward each other, as though blown by a gust of passion. And this time little Captain Andy turned his back and clattered down the aisle. When they emerged again into the sunshine they found him, a pixie figure, leaning pensively against the great black trunk of a live oak. He was smoking a pipe somewhat apologetically, as though he hoped the recumbent Ravenals would not find it objectionable.
“I guess,” he remarked, as Magnolia and Ravenal came up to him, “I’ll have to bring your ma over. She’s partial to history, her having been a schoolma’am, and all.”