"Do they fill the box?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "Shall I nail the cover on?"
"Oh, don't nail it," she protested, shuddering. "We won't put any cover on, I think; at least—not yet."
Long before Dr. Primrose died he had planned with Letitia what she should do without him. His home then would be hers, and she was to sell it and become a school-mistress, the one vocation for which his classical companionship had seemed to fit her and to which her own book-loving mind inclined. Left alone then she tried vainly to dispose of her little property, living meanwhile with us next door to it, and gradually, chiefly with my own assistance and the mater's, packing and storing the few possessions from which she could not bring herself to part. To Editor Butters she presented an old edition of King Lear; to me, not one, but many of her father's best-loved books, which she fancied might be of charm and use to me.
Of relatives across the sea Letitia knew little beyond a few strange names she had heard her father speak, and in her native and his adopted land she had no kinsfolk she had ever seen save a distant cousin as far removed from her in miles as blood, and remembered chiefly as a marvellously brocaded waistcoat with pearl buttons, to which she had raised her timorous eyes on his only visit to her father years ago. Apparently, this little girl had gone no farther up. She could never remember a face above that saffron vest, and, what was still more remarkable, considering her shyness, was never certain even of the knees and boots that must have been somewhere below.
Now the yellow waistcoat, whose name was George—Cousin George McLean—had a daughter Dove, or Cousin Dove, as Letitia called her, concerning whom we always used to smile and wonder, so that in course of time myths had grown up about the girl whom none of us had ever seen and of whom we had no notions save the idle fancies suggested by her odd, sweet, unforgettable little name.
The mater had always said that she must be a quaint and demure little thing—in short, dovelike.
That, my father argued, was quite unlikely, since he had never known a child to mature in keeping with a foolish, flowery, or pious Christian name. He had never known a human Lily to grow up tall and pale and slender, or a Violet to be shy and modest and petite, or a Faith or Hope or Patience to be singularly spiritual and mild. For example, there was Charity B——, of Grassy Ford, who hinted that heaven was Presbyterian, and that she knew folks, not a thousand miles off, either, who would never be—Presbyterians, my father said; and so, he added, it was dollars to dough-nuts that Cousin Dove was not at all dovelike, but a freckled and red-haired, roistering, tomboy little thing.
Letitia had a notion, she scarce knew how or why, that Cousin Dove was not birdlike, but like a flower, she said—a white-and-pink-cheeked British type with fluffy yellow hair and a fondness for candy, trinkets, and even boys.
As for myself, I had two notions as a boy—one for the forum, the other for my cell. The first was simply that Cousin Dove was pale and tall and frigid beyond endurance. I could see her, I declared, going to church somewhere with two little black-and-gilt books held limply in her hand—and she had green eyes, I said. On the other hand, privately, I kept a far different portrait in mind—a gilded one, rather a golden vision by way of analogy, I suppose, for was not Dove the veritable daughter of a gorgeous, saffron-hued brocade? From yellow waistcoat to cloth of gold is but a step for a bookish boy. She was tall and stately, I told myself; and as I saw her then, her mediæval robe clung lovingly about her, plain but edged with pearls (seed-pearls I think they called them in the old romances), and she had a necklace of larger pearls, loops of them hanging a golden cross upon her bosom. Her face was radiant, her eyes blue, her hair golden, and she wore a coronal of meadow flowers. I do not mean that I really fancied Cousin Dove was so in flesh and blood, but such to me was the spirit of her gentle name, the spell of which had conjured up for me in some rare moment of youthful fancy this Lady of the Marigolds, this Christmas-card St. Dove.