Little Margot soon settled down into the life she loved best. Her object was to please her dear granddad. She was fond of her uncles and her old-young aunts and of dear, stately little Madam, but there was no one in all the world like The Desmond himself.
In her sweet presence he became a sort of child again. He went out, holding her little brown hand, and although it was still too early in the year to gather many flowers, such as grew in profusion in the south of France, they did find wonderful mosses, and the first, sweet, daring crocuses, and snowdrops and even primroses.
They did find wonderful mosses and snow drops and even
primroses.—[Page 349.]
Margot used to pick them and bring them into granddad's room and arrange them with her exquisite taste for his comfort and pleasure. Hitherto he had called flowers more or less rubbish, but now this human flower had taught him to love all the flowers and green things of the fields. The mosses, fructifying in their full perfection, delighted the old man as much as the child. He polished up an ancient microscope, and they examined these treasures of nature together side by side. They did not want to talk about anything else while the beautiful mosses were in their bloom. The Desmond even went to the expense of getting high glass globes to cover the mosses, which caused them to grow up tall and strong, and the two—the old and the young child—felt the perfection of joy as they watched them.
"Oh, granddad, you are so funny," said little Margot.
Granddad replied by "Hip, hip, hurrah! Erin go bragh;[1] the pushkeen forever."
Her old-young aunts were much entertained by Margot's devotion to the old man. They themselves considered it childish. They began to consider The Desmond in his dotage, whereas, in reality, he had never been so alive and so amusing. A little child was leading him, and surely there could be no safer guide to the Kingdom of Heaven.
But happy days, even the happiest, come to an end. The season of the fructification of the moss was over, and Margot now was fully engaged in filling granddad's room with cowslips and bluebells, and with beautiful, large primroses in quantities.