“We spent two winters in Italy, Jean and I, and one in Algiers,” Molly was saying plaintively. “Heavens, Malise, they’re building that house on stilts, right over a sinkhole of tin cans.”
For that matter there were tin cans everywhere. It was most depressing.
“Even Louisville was better than this,” said Molly grudgingly. “Don’t look so resigned, Malise; it’s not becoming.”
They turned a corner and the driver stopped before a long, two-storied building, painted white, which proved to be the hotel. It stood up from the street on wooden posts, the space between latticed. A railed gallery ran across the front, steps ascending midway of its length. Two giant live-oaks flanked the building either end, the wooden sidewalk cut out to encircle their great roots, and, while handbills and placards were tacked up and down the rugged, seamy trunks, yet grey moss drooped from the branches and swept the gallery posts. The building looked roomy, old-fashioned and reposeful, and Alexina’s spirits rose. She gathered up the wraps, Celeste the satchels—no one ever looked to Molly to gather up anything—and they went in.
The place seemed deserted and asleep, but just inside the doorway, where the hall broadened into an office, a man stood looking through a pile of newspapers. His clothes were black and his vest clerical; below its edge hung a small gold cross. He turned politely, then said he would go and find some one.
“Dear me,” said Molly, brightening, “he’s handsome.”
Two days after, they were settled in comfortable rooms overlooking the hotel grounds. A slope down to a small lake boasted some gnarled old live-oaks and pines, and one side was set out with a young orange grove. Across the water one could see several more or less pretentious new houses built around the shore. The breeze tasted of pine and Molly had slept a night through without coughing.
“But, Heavens!” she complained, the second afternoon, lolling back in a wooden arm-chair on the hotel gallery; “isn’t there anything to do?”
Alexina and the young man in clerical garb were her audience. He was the Reverend Harrison Henderson, and had charge of the Episcopal Church of Aden and lived at the hotel. He seemed a definite and earnest man. His blond profile was strong. It was a rather immobile face, perhaps, but it lighted with very evident pleasure as he answered Mrs. Garnier.
“How would you like to go out to Nancy?” he proposed; “it’s quite an affair for a lake down here, and a young fellow out there rents sail-boats.”