“The only time I ever tried in earnest to do anything I came near losing my life,” he said, “and so now I’ll let you decide for me. Shall I turn lawyer, or preacher, or dressmaker? I really have more talent for the latter than for anything else. I might, with a little practice, be a second Worth; or I should make a pretty good salesman of laces and silks in some dry-goods store. So which shall it be—preacher, dressmaker, or clerk? I am bound to earn my own living in some way.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Queenie answered, warmly. “A dressmaker or clerk! What nonsense! You are too indolent to be either; for, as a clerk, you would want to sit down most of the time, and dressmaking would give you a pain in your side. So you are going to be a farmer at Magnolia Park, which needs some one to bring it up. With money, and time, and care it can be made one of the finest places in Florida. Mr. Johnson, who lives on the adjoining plantation, told me so, and there are plenty of negroes to be hired; only they must have an overseer, to direct them.”
“So I am to have no higher occupation than that of a negro overseer! Truly the mighty have fallen!” Phil said, laughingly, but well pleased on the whole with the prospect before him.
He liked nothing better than superintending outdoor work, and with Queenie believed that in a little time he could make Magnolia Park a second Chateau des Fleurs, if indeed he did not convert it into something like the famous Kew Gardens in England. It was to be their home proper, where all their winters were to be passed; but the summers were to be spent at the North, sometimes at Hetherton Place, sometimes at the Knoll, or wherever their fancy might lead them.
Thus they settled their future, and when Mr. Beresford and Margery went back to Merrivale the latter part of September, Phil and Queenie went with them, and were received with great rejoicings by the Rossiters and by the people generally, while even Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter, who was boarding for a few weeks at the hotel, drove down to the station to meet them in her elegant new carriage, which, with its thoroughbreds and its brass-buttoned driver, was making quite a sensation in Merrivale.
Anna was very happy in her prosperity, and very gracious to Queenie, who could afford to forget the slights put upon her at the St. James when she was lonely and sad, and was ready to accept all good the gods provided for her.
It was late in November when Phil and Queenie started at last for their Florida home, where, during the holidays, they were joined by Margery, and where a little later Mr. Beresford came to claim the hand of his bride, for Margery was to be married at Magnolia Park, and the ceremony took place quietly one January evening, when the air was as soft and mild as the air of June at the North, and the young moon looked down upon the newly wedded pair. There was a short visit to the St. James, where Margery and Queenie reigned triumphant as belles for a few weeks, and then won fresh laurels at St. Augustine and Palatka. By this time Mr. Beresford’s business necessitated his return to the North, but as Phil had no business except to oversee the negroes, and as these did not need overseeing then, he and Queenie tarried longer, and together explored the Ocklawaha and the upper St. John’s, and fired at alligators, and camped out for two or three days on the Indian River, and hunted, and fished, and were almost as happy as were the first pair in Eden before the serpent entered there.
All this was good for Phil, whose constitution had received a great shock from his long illness in Africa, and who thus gained strength and vigor for the new life before him—that of improving and bringing up Magnolia Park, which had so long run to waste.
It is more than two years now since Queenie and Phil were married, and last winter they were at Hetherton Place, where a second Queenie Hetherton lay in its cradle and opened its big blue eyes wonderingly at the little lady who bent over it so rapturously, and called herself its “auntie.” Queenie has no children, but she seems so much a child herself, and looks so small beside her tall husband, who can pick her up and sit her on his shoulder, or, as he says, “put her in his pocket,” that a baby would look oddly in her arms. Bright, mirthful, and variable as the April sunshine, she goes on her way, happy in the love which has crowned her so completely, and not a shadow crosses her pathway, except when she remembers the past, which at one time held so much bitterness for her. Then for a moment her eyes grow darker, and with a sigh she says, “The worst of all was losing faith in father.”
There is a tall monument to his memory in Merrivale, and a smaller, less pretentious one marks the grave of Christine in Memphis, erected “by her daughters.” This was Margery’s idea, “for,” she said to Queenie, “she was to all intents and purposes my mother—the only one I ever knew.”