“There isn’t,” said he, disclosing for the first time in his life, and quite unconsciously, his passion for the place where he had been born. “There’s nowhere else but Charleston worth anything—I don’t know what it is about, but it’s so.”
They were passing a wall across whose top peeped an elbow of ivy geranium. It was as though the unseen garden beyond, tired of constraint and drowsily stretching, had disclosed this hint of a geranium coloured arm.
Pinckney paused at a wrought iron gate and opened it.
“This is Vernons,” said he.
CHAPTER II
A grosbeak was singing in the magnolia tree by the gate and the warmth of the morning sun was filling the garden with a heart-snatching perfume of jessamine.
Jessamine and the faint bitterness of sun warmed foliage.
It was a garden sure to be haunted by birds; not large and, though well kept, not trim, and sing the birds as loud as they might, they never could break the charm of silence cast by Time on this magic spot.