CHAPTER XXIX. THE TROUBADOUR.
About five o'clock in the evening, Nina and Anne amused themselves with setting a fancy tea-table on the veranda. Nina had gathered a quantity of the leaves of the live-oak, which she possessed a particular faculty of plaiting in long, flat wreaths, and with these she garlanded the social round table, after it had been draped in its snowy damask, while Anne was busy arranging fruit in dishes with vine-leaves.
"Lettice will be in despair, to-night," said Anne, looking up, and smiling at a neatly-dressed brown mulatto girl, who stood looking on with large, lustrous eyes; "her occupation's gone!"
"Oh, Lettice must allow me to show my accomplishments," said Nina. "There are some household arts that I have quite a talent for. If I had lived in what-'s-its-name, there, that they used to tell about in old times—Arcadia—I should have made a good housekeeper; for nothing suits me better than making wreaths, and arranging bouquets. My nature is dressy. I want to dress everything. I want to dress tables, and dress vases, and adorn dishes, and dress handsome women, Anne! So look out for yourself, for when I have done crowning the table, I shall crown you!"
As Nina talked, she was flitting hither and thither, taking up and laying down flowers and leaves, shaking out long sprays, and fluttering from place to place, like a bird.
"It's a pity," said Anne, "that life can't be all Arcadia!"
"Oh, yes!" said Nina. "When I was a child, I remember there was an old torn translation of a book called Gesner's Idyls, that used to lie about the house; and I used to read in it most charming little stories about handsome shepherds, dressed in white, playing on silver and ivory flutes; and shepherdesses, with azure mantles and floating hair; and people living on such delightful things as cool curds and milk, and grapes, and strawberries, and peaches; and there was no labor, and no trouble, and no dirt, and no care. Everybody lived like the flowers and the birds,—growing and singing, and being beautiful. Ah, dear, I have never got over wanting it since! Why couldn't it be so?"
"It's a thousand pities!" said Anne. "But what constant fight we have to maintain for order and beauty!"