“It’s fair to divide families into component parts on occasions,” he stated, and put Alexina in a place by his own and Molly behind. Molly pouted.
“And, besides, we are going to drop Henderson at a sick parishioner’s on the way,” he said, with a naughty glance at her. “I met him starting to the livery stable just now and stopped him.”
Molly’s face cleared. She met his eyes with insouciance, but, somehow, one felt all at once that she liked him better.
Mr. Henderson came out with a satchel and climbed in. He looked stern and uninviting, Alexina thought, but the note of Molly’s random remarkings promptly brightened. Willy flicked the whip above the big grey span and off they trotted across town, westward.
The morning was keen enough that the sun’s warmth was pleasant and quickened the blood. Aden was left behind. Here and there on the outskirts frame houses, crudely and hideously cheap, were building. Land everywhere was being cleared, the felled trees lying about, the whirl of a portable sawmill telling their destiny, while burning stumps filled the air with creosote pungency.
Then the despoilments of progress were left behind and the untouched pine woods closed about them, and trees rose tall, straight, twigless, to where a never-ceasing murmur soughed, and the light came sifting, speckled, and flickering through the gloom, upon the sandy ground and scrub palmetto beneath.
Alexina breathed deep. It was quiet, and peaceful and solemn.
“Isn’t it?” said William sociably.
She looked up; she hadn’t spoken.
The trees thinned, grew sparse, and the road came out into the open. A mile farther on they entered a belt of hummock land, a wild growth of live-oak, cypress, magnolias, thicketed, intertwisted, rank. Grey moss trailed and swept their faces as they passed under, vines clambered and swung and festooned, gophers crawled out of the path, and a gleaming snake slid across the road and into the palmetto undergrowth.