“I should think it would be stifling like a big hot-house, under those glass roofs of the courts,” said Dr. Delano, addressing Mrs. Kendrick.
“Oh no; in the first place, those roofs are very high, and have openings, and then great volumes of air are constantly coming in from the underground ventilating galleries; besides, I am told that all immense buildings, like St. Peter’s at Rome, keep their own temperature very evenly all the year round.”
“That a workingman’s home!” repeated Ella, as if dreaming. “Why, the finest mansions in Boston would be lost inside of it!” And she sank back in the carriage as if exhausted. Such a palace for mere laboring people seemed to shock her sense of the fitness of things, like the sight of hippopotami on a grand banqueting-table.
Felix was waiting to receive them at the grand entrance; and giving the carriage into the hands of one of the uniformed young men, he conducted his guests up the grand stairway, decorated with huge vases of flowers, along the corridor into his own apartments. Louise begged Charlotte to take them at once into the back parlor opening on the great conservatory. The long folding windows were open, and through these they passed on to the balcony surrounding the conservatory on three sides; for it extended quite through the end of the quadrangle toward the south-east, where it ended by a double wall of glass. Dr. Delano seemed struck dumb by the magnificent spectacle before them. The air was laden with rich perfumes, and the colors of the foliage and flower, were dazzling in their beauty.
“This,” said Charlotte proudly, “is our tropical conservatory. There are several others in the nursery grounds. The whole is under the head direction of Madam Susie, but there are many skillful florists under her.”
The great palm stood in the centre, and reared its huge trunk and wide-spreading fronds toward the glass dome, which the rays of the setting sun still emblazoned. The wide passage around this centre was laid in handsome colored tiles, like all the floors of the balconies, so that water could not injure them. The visitors looked down from the balcony on to this walk, where people were continually passing. “See!” said Dr. Delano, calling the attention of Ella. “Do you see those two young ladies in white under the palm-tree?”
“No—where? There are so many.”
“Why, there on your right, in ball-dress, with their cavaliers. Those are the Forest girls—twins, you know. How very pretty they look!”
“I must say this is magnificent!” exclaimed Kendrick, who was studying the conservatory, being much interested in the subject, from his own experience. Plants seemed there to forget what latitudes they were born to. Huge century plants from Mexico crowned vases set on high pedestals, and spread out their long polished leaves, as if enamored of their foster climate. Around these pedestals climbed the many-tinted velvet foliage of the lovely Cissus discolor. There were poinsettias from Australia opening out their giant crimson bracts, the papyrus from Egypt, clerodendrons, and a wonderful variety of caladiums, whose broad leaves reflected the most brilliant colors. There were climbing plants in great number; large orange-trees, filled with flowers and fruit that had been growing under Susie’s care at her old conservatories; banana-trees, on which hung heavy clusters of ripening fruit; pineapples, in the sunniest spots; and every plant, every leaf, in that vast court seemed to have found its own conditions for perfect growth.
“My dear Charlotte,” said Felix, with the tenderness in his gray eyes that is seldom wanting in young husbands, “is not the dinner waiting?”