“You’ve always lived here at Glenwood, haven’t you, Uncle Peter?” asked Polly wonderingly. “Years, and years, and years.”
“And I don’ want to live in no better place ’ceptin’ Paradise, possibly Paradise,” smiled back the old man, happily. “I was born down yonder in de ole quarters, yo’ know. We don’ use ’em no more nowadays, ’ceptin’ for storehouses. Miss Diantha, she’d come visitin’ with her sister, and her lady mother. Dey was quality, now I’m tellin’ you. And Miss Di, she allers liked de time when de lilies come troopin’ along, de big lilies, gold with ruby hearts.”
“Did she know my own mother?” Polly asked the question slowly, and softly, as she always spoke of the young mother whom she had never seen, who had died when she was only a few days old.
“Land, no, chile. She knew yo’ grandma. Mis’ Car’line. Dat’s de Admiral’s lady. Why, your own daddy warn’t no more’n born. What you all askin’ questions for? Jes’ like a darby bird.”
Polly forgot to ask what a darby bird was, in her eagerness to get at the truth of this matter about Miss Diantha.
“Why, I heard only last night, that she was married, and lived ’way out west in Wyoming, and I wondered how it had happened.”
“Like enough, like enough,” Uncle Peter rejoined placidly. “When folks move away from Virginny, after being blessed enough to be born hyar, dey’s liable to have all sorts of misconveniences happen to ’em.”
“Yes, sir,” Polly said meekly. Not for worlds would she have directly contradicted Uncle Peter. Next to the Admiral and Aunty Welcome, he stood in authority. On her way back to the house she gathered flowers to decorate the broad old hall, great clusters of purple and white lilac that filled the air with fragrance. As she was arranging them in the low, plump jardinières in the hall, she thought of that other girl, years and years ago, who had loved to visit beautiful Glenwood when the lilies were in bloom. She wondered whether Mrs. “Sandy” of the Alameda Ranch, ever longed to see some of these same golden lilies with the ruby hearts, just to make her think of dear old Queen’s Ferry. And most of all, perhaps, she wondered how it had all happened, why Diantha had ever married, why she had gone to live so far west, and why Miss Calvert never mentioned her name, yet loved her memory dearly.
It was about five that afternoon when Miss Murray arrived.
“Am I too early, Polly?” she asked, as Polly ran to greet her. “It is only five, but you know you said to come early.”