"Certainly not. On the contrary, most amiable."
"She has been telling me a great deal about her girl's bringing up."
"Ah! That is a favorite subject of hers."
"She says they both prefer England to America."
"The daughter does not go that length, at present. Mr. Planter is a very indulgent husband and father, but I suppose he would not be pleased if he heard his wife say that."
Mrs. Frampton complained much of the tedium of the journey, though the capacity of roaming through a long train of cars, of visiting, when so minded, the one devoted to refreshment, and of studying the Planter family at stated intervals, broke the monotony of those three days and nights. To Grace, her head pressed against the window most of the time, with a wonderful panorama rolling past her dreamy eyes, the time did not seem long. Her thoughts and heart were far away—now, in some foggy chambers in the King's Bench Walk, now in the yet foggier law courts. Therefore it was that her eyes looked dreamy, though they gazed on the grand scenery of the La Veta range till darkness swallowed it up, and though they opened at daybreak to find those mountains lying like a string of pink shells on the horizon, their bases still veiled in blue mists, while the tawny yellow prairie, and cliffs of sandstone in the foreground, were gradually being kissed into life by the rising sun. The whole of the journey was memorable for its beauty and strangeness, and will never be forgotten by that solitary watcher at the car-window, though it seemed at the time as though her mind were too much engrossed to be very sensitive to the impression of outward objects. Through the lovely plain of Utah, past Salt Lake City, surrounded by its still leafless gardens and orchards; over wild stretches of frozen prairie, where the little dogs came out of their holes and sat up, unafraid, on their hind-legs to watch the train; down, at twilight, into the very heart of purple-folded hills, clear-cut against the orange glow of sunset; boring its way through mighty walls of granite—the train sped on, till the morning of the third day broke and revealed a very different scene. It was as though a wizard's hand had touched the roadside, the vast stretches of garden and vineyard, with an emerald green, the vividness of which, no doubt, seemed greater by contrast with the midwinter the travellers had been looking upon but a few hours since. Here, in California, it was not spring, but already early summer; arum-lilies thrust up their sheafs of bloom behind the palings of little white-faced houses; great fruit farms were a-flush with almond, peach, and apricot-blossom; and here and there scarlet and gold flashed out among the greenery as the train rushed by.
To two young persons without much poetry in their composition—the one engrossed with his companion, the other pleased, amused, and flattered—these varying aspects of nature, and the sudden melting of the iron bands of winter, spoke only the dryest prose. It had been cold; was now suddenly warm; instead of snow and ice, green blades of grass were sprouting everywhere. And that was all. Had they read, and if so did they understand, the sweet old fable of "The Sleeping Beauty" awakened by the magic horn of love? Certain it is that the fancy of neither suggested any analogy between that fable and the frost-bound earth casting off her fetters, under the warm breath of spring, arising and putting forth her tender buds, and bursting, after slumberous silence, into song. And no doubt it was just as well. Had either been of an imaginative temperament, he or she would not have suited the other—for all present purposes—as well.
On the third afternoon they entered the fair city of San Francisco.
CHAPTER XXII
Two young men were waiting at the depot, evidently prepared by telegram for Miss Planter's arrival. In the course of the evening several more appeared at the Palace Hotel, among them Mr. Bloxsome. And during the Planters' stay at San Francisco their rooms were scarcely ever free from her admirers, who came there sometimes "single spies," sometimes in "battalions."