They come into the settin’ room, and Victor sot down as usual and took Boy up in his arms—he loved the child.
Genieve went up into her room to tend to some last thing she wanted done, and we sot there in the settin’ room, and visited for a spell back and forth.
Josiah and Cousin John Richard had walked down to the village, and Thomas Jefferson hadn’t come home yet.
Genieve found a letter from Hester a layin’ on her table, and she opened it and read it in the last faint rosy glow of the daylight. Hester and Felix wuz to meet them where they embarked. Hester’s letter wuz full of joyful anticipation about the new home to which she wuz a goin’. Poor thing! bein’ so tosted about and misused as she had been, it is no wonder.
She and Felix wuz lookin’ forward with such delight and happiness towards the new home that their fervor thrilled Genieve’s heart anew, and she sot there after she had read the letter and looked off into the rosy light of the sunset, and she dreamed a dream.
It wuz a still twilight. The flowers about her window stood sweet and motionless against the glowin’ light.
The last golden rays come through the vine-wreathed casement and fell on the letter lyin’ open in her lap, and as she sot there with her beautiful head leanin’ back against the old carved chair-back, the shinin’ rays seemed to move and get mixed with the shadows of the vine leaves.
They moved, they shone, they took form, and as she sot there Genieve saw—whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth—but she saw her future home in the New Republic.
She saw a fair land lyin’ under a clearer, softer sky, but it bent down on strange foliage—giant palm-trees cleaved the blue sky, and birds, like great crimson and golden blossoms, were flyin’ back and forth in and out of the green, shinin’ branches.
Crystal rivers wuz flowin’ through that land, whose clear waves wuz dotted with the sails of a busy commerce.