“Then I will,” said Maggie; and turning to the little strangers she added, “Bessie knows what’s inside of my mind most as well as I do myself; so if she tells me I would do a thing, I just know I would.”
So Maggie, too, put by her share of the grapes, till the company had gone, and Belle felt free to tell what she wanted to do with them; when she agreed that Bessie was right, and she was quite ready to save her grapes for such a “circumstance.” It was but a small act of self-denial for these little girls to make out of their abundance; but who can tell the pleasure the gift gave to old Daphne. And verily Belle had her reward.
“Now Heaven bress my child,” said the old woman, when Belle offered the grapes, and told that she and her young friends had kept them from their play: “if she ain’t growin’ jes like her dear mamma, who was allus thinkin’ for oders.”
Nothing could have pleased Belle more than to be told she was like her dear mother; but she said,—
“I didn’t used to think for ofers much, Daphne; not till I saw Bessie do it, and Maggie too. They taught me.”
“Never min’ who taught ye, so long as you’re willin’ to learn,” said Daphne. “But I say Heaven bress them dear little girls too, as I knows it will.”
Pleased as Daphne was, she would have been better satisfied if her little mistress had taken back her gift for her own use; but Belle insisted that she should eat the grapes herself, and indeed climbed on her lap and stuffed them one after the other into her mouth, refusing to taste one herself.
“What is that, Uncle Horace?” asked Maggie, one afternoon when she and Bessie were out driving on the Avenue with Colonel Rush, Aunt Bessie, and the boys.
The object of her interest was certainly of a nature to excite curiosity. It was a round building of stone, supported by eight pillars, with open arches between. In the wall, above the pillars, were three narrow loop-holes or openings. It could scarcely have been told, however, that it was built of stone; for pillars and round walls were alike covered with beautiful green vines, just now in all their summer glory. It stood in the centre of a small park or common, where children and nurses were playing and wandering about.