"I want no better," she answered. "Have you not lived here all these years?"
"Adam called you Queen. You should have a palace—"
"If I am Queen, then you must be a King. I think it is a lovely palace. What is that tree by the gate—all feathery pink?"
"A mimosa. Mr. Jefferson gave it to me. It is like you—it does not belong on the Three-Notched Road. It should stand in a palace garden with dim alleys, fountains, and orange groves." He ended in a deeper tone, "Why not? One day we may plant a mimosa in such a garden, and smile and say, 'Do you remember the tree—do you remember our wedding day?' Who knows—who knows?"
"You shall stay in that palace all alone," said Jacqueline. "I like this one best."
The house stood back from the road in its clump of pines. The coach stopped, and Rand and Jacqueline, descending, crossed a strip of short grass tufted with fennel and velvet mullein to the gate beneath the mimosa, entered the gay little yard, and moved up the path to the larger of the two porches. They were at home. On the porch to welcome them they found the white man who worked on shares and oversaw the farm, Joab and three other slaves of Rand's, Mammy Chloe, Hannah, and the negro men who belonged to Jacqueline. These gave a noisy greeting. Rand put money into the hands of the slaves and sent them away happy to the tumble-down quarter behind the house. The white man took his leave, and Mammy Chloe and Hannah retired to the kitchen, where supper was in preparation. Rand and Jacqueline entered together the clean, bare rooms.
Later, when Hannah's supper had been praised and barely touched, the two came again to the porch, and presently, hand in hand, moved down the steps, and over the dry summer grass to the mimosa at the gate. Here they turned, and in the gathering dusk looked back at the house, the sleeping pines, and all the shadowy surrounding landscape.
"Hear the frogs in the marsh!" said Rand. "They are excited to-night. They know I have brought a princess home."
"Listen to the cow-bells," she said. "I love to hear them, faint and far like that. I love to think of you, a little barefoot boy, bringing home the cows—and never, never dreaming once of me!"
"When could that have been?" he asked. "I have always dreamed of you—even when 'twas pain to dream!—There is the first whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will! Once it had the loneliest sound! The moon is growing brighter. The dark has come."