“The name is much more picturesque. But all the darky sayings are. I heard him telling our butler once, of something, that ‘when de debble heah dat, he gwine sen’ fo’ he smellin’-salts.’ Who else would ever have put it that way? Do you find him and Aunt Daph useful?”
“He has been a godsend,” he said fervently; “and her cooking has taught me to treat her with passionate respect. As Uncle Jefferson says she can ‘put de big pot in de li’l one en mek soup outer de laigs.’ He’s teaching me now about flowers—it’s surprising how many kinds he knows. He’s a walking herbarium.”
“Come and see mine,” she said. “Roses are our specialty—we have to live up to the Rosewood name. But beyond the arbors, are beds and beds of other flowers. See—by this big tree are speedwell and delphinium. The tree is a black-walnut. It’s a dreadful thing to have one as big as that. When you want something that costs a lot of money you go and look at it and wonder which you want most, that particular luxury or the tree. I know a girl who had two in her yard only a little bigger than this, and she went to Europe on them. But so far I’ve always voted for the tree.”
“Perhaps you’ve not been sufficiently tempted.”
“Maybe,” she assented, and in a bar of light from a window, stooped over a glimmering patch to pull him a sprig of bluebells. “The wildings are hard to find,” she said, “so I grow a few here. What ghostly tintings they show in this half-light! My corn-flowers aren’t in bloom yet. Here are wild violets. They are the single ones, you know, the kind two children play cock-fighting with.” She picked two of the blossoms and hooked their heads together. “See, both pull till one rooster’s head drops off.” She bent again and passed her hand lovingly over a mass of starry blooms. “And here are some bluet, the violet roosters’ little pale-blue hens. How does your garden come on?”
“Famously. Uncle Jefferson has shanghaied a half-dozen negro gardeners—from where I can’t imagine—and he’s having the time of his life hectoring over them. He refers to the upper and lower terraces as ‘up- and down-stairs.’ I’ve got seeds, but it will be a long time before they flower.”
“Oh, would you like some slips?” she cried. “Or, better still, I can give you the roses already rooted—Mad Charles and Maréchal Neil and Cloth of Gold and cabbage and ramblers. We have geraniums and fuchsias, too, and the coral honeysuckle. That’s different from the wild one, you know.”
“You are too good! If you would only advise me where to set them! But I dare say you think me presuming.”
She turned her full face to him. “‘Presuming!’ You’re punishing me now for the dreadful way I talked to you about Damory Court—before I knew who you were. Oh, it was unpardonable! And after the splendid thing you had done—I read about it that same evening—with your money, I mean!”
“No, no!” he protested. “There was nothing splendid about it. It was only pride. You see the Corporation was my father’s great idea—the thing he created and put his soul into—and it was foundering. I know that would have hurt him. One thing I’ve wanted to say to you, ever since the day we talked together—about the duel. I want to say that whatever lay behind it, my father’s whole life was darkened by that event. Now that I can put two and two together, I know that it was the cause of his sadness.”