CHAPTER XXII.
While Rosabella was thus exchanging the laurel crown for the myrtle wreath, Flora and her friend were on their way to search the places that had formerly known her. Accompanied by Mr. Jacobs, who had long been a steward in her family, Mrs. Delano passed through Savannah, without calling on her friend Mrs. Welby, and in a hired boat proceeded to the island. Flora almost flew over the ground, so great was her anxiety to reach the cottage. Nature, which pursues her course with serene indifference to human vicissitudes, wore the same smiling aspect it had worn two years before, when she went singing through the woods, like Cinderella, all unconscious of the beneficent fairy she was to meet there in the form of a new Mamita. Trees and shrubs were beautiful with young, glossy foliage. Pines and firs offered their aromatic incense to the sun. Birds were singing, and bees gathering honey from the wild-flowers. A red-headed woodpecker was hammering away on the umbrageous tree under which Flora used to sit while busy with her sketches. He cocked his head to listen as they approached, and, at first sight of them, flew up into the clear blue air, with undulating swiftness. To Flora's great disappointment, they found all the doors fastened; but Mr. Jacobs entered by a window and opened one of them. The cottage had evidently been deserted for a considerable time. Spiders had woven their tapestry in all the corners. A pane had apparently been cut out of the window their attendant had opened, and it afforded free passage to the birds. On a bracket of shell-work, which Flora had made to support a vase of flowers, was a deserted nest, bedded in soft green moss, which hung from it in irregular streamers and festoons.
"How pretty!" said Mrs. Delano. "If the little creature had studied the picturesque, she couldn't have devised anything more graceful. Let us take it, bracket and all, and carry it home carefully."
"That was the very first shell-work I made after we came from Nassau," rejoined Flora. "I used to put fresh flowers on it every morning, to please Rosa. Poor Rosa! Where can she be?"
She turned away her head, and was silent for a moment. Then, pointing to the window, she said: "There's that dead pine-tree I told you I used to call Old Man of the Woods. He is swinging long pennants of moss on his arms, just as he did when I was afraid to look at him in the moonlight."
She was soon busy with a heap of papers swept into a corner of the room she used to occupy. They were covered with sketches of leaves and flowers, and embroidery-patterns, and other devices with which she had amused herself in those days. Among them she was delighted to find the head and shoulders of Thistle, with a garland round his neck. In Rosa's sleeping-room, an old music-book, hung with cobwebs, leaned against the wall.
"O Mamita Lila, I am glad to find this!" exclaimed Flora. "Here is what Rosa and I used to sing to dear papa when we were ever so little. He always loved old-fashioned music. Here are some of Jackson's canzonets, that were his favorites." She began to hum, "Time has not thinned my flowing hair." "Here is Dr. Arne's 'Sweet Echo.' Rosa used to play and sing that beautifully. And here is what he always liked to have us sing to him at sunset. We sang it to him the very night before he died." She began to warble, "Now Phoebus sinketh in the west." "Why, it seems as if I were a little girl again, singing to Papasito and Mamita," said she.
Looking up, she saw that Mrs. Delano had covered her face with her handkerchief; and closing the music-book, she nestled to her side, affectionately inquiring what had troubled her. For a little while her friend pressed her hand in silence.
"O darling," said she, "what a strange, sad gift is memory! I sang that to your father the last time we ever saw the sunset together; and perhaps when he heard it he used to see me sometimes, as plainly as I now see him. It is consoling to think he did not quite forget me."
"When we go home, I will sing it to you every evening if you would like it, Mamita Lila," said Flora.