He was looking at her as they came out, she flushed and ecstatic.
“But wait,” said he, “until I show it to you after a while in bloom.”
Just beyond the hummock he drew rein at a clearing before an unpainted frame house, even cheaper and more hideous than the most. Mr. Henderson got out, King handing the satchel after him.
“It’s a death-bed,” he said under his breath to the two, as the minister went toward the house; “that’s the pitiful part of it down here, people taking all they’ve got to get here, only to die.”
“Don’t—don’t tell about it,” said Molly sharply.
William Leroy touched the mules and they went on. A little later Alexina felt Molly’s hand upon her. “Come back with me, Malise,” she begged. Her face looked drawn and grey.
“But we’re there,” explained King, and a minute after turned in at an old iron gate, flanked by two ancient live-oaks. An osage hedge, cut back upon its woody stock, stretched about the place either side from the gate. Within, the driveway made a sweep off towards buildings in the rear, while a shell path led up to the house, which was of frame, wide, with porches across the front, up-stairs and down. Bermuda grass covered the sandy surface of the yard, which was large and sloped back towards the lake, visible through the grove. Here and there a banana plant reared its ragged luxuriance and a stunted palm or two struggled upward; there was on old rustic seat beneath a gnarled wild orange tree.
As Willy helped them out, Charlotte appeared and came animatedly down the path between the borders of crepe myrtle. Alexina ran ahead to meet her. The girl’s hands were quite cold. Mrs. Leroy’s white dress, relic of bygone fashion, fluttered with rose-coloured ribbons, and suddenly Alexina seemed to see a wide old cottage in a shrub-grown yard, and on its porch a lady in a gauzy dress with rosy ribbons, gathering a little child into her lap.
The girl threw her arms about this Charlotte in the old white dress, and then, because her eyes were full of foolish tears, ran on, for the Captain was on the porch, in a cane arm-chair, a line of blue smoke trailing up from the cigar in his fingers. Laughing and breathless she went up the steps and their eyes met. Never a word spoke either, but the hand of the man closed on the girl’s and rested there until the others came up.
“Willy wouldn’t let me do a thing about your coming, Alexina,” Mrs. Leroy began, as she reached them; “he said he’d tend to it himself and wouldn’t let me give a direction. He’s fussy sometimes and notionate, like the time when the surveyors were staying with us, and Mandy set some dishes on a chair. I’d already told him she didn’t know how to clear a table for dessert, and he said I ought to have taught her.”