Benigna was left behind, and, with winning smiles and a flutter of attentions, the young girl now placed the chairs, and began to cackle, as Crispus would have expressed himself, and to entreat the wanderers to take that refreshment of which they stood so much in need. They all had the delicate and graceful tact to feel that compliance with the kindness which they had so providentially found was the only way to return it which they at present possessed.
It is historical to add that appetite gave the same advice. Their hunger was as keen as their tact. During supper the mother and son spoke little; but Agatha, both during the repast and for some time afterward, kept up a brisk conversation with Benigna, for whom the child had taken an inexpressible liking, and from whom she drew, with unconscious adroitness, the fact that she was engaged to be married. That sudden affection of sympathy which knit the soul of David to that of Jonathan seemed to have bound these two together. The landlady's considerate daughter at length advised Agatha to defer further communications until she should have a good night's rest. Paulus seconded the recommendation, and left his mother and sister with their Greek slave Melena and with Benigna, and retired to his own bedroom. This chamber overlooked the impluvium, or inner court, whence the incessant plash of the fountain was heard soothingly through his lattice-window, the horn slide of which he left open. The bedroom of the ladies, on the other hand, overlooked the garden and bee-hives, to which Crispina had alluded. The sitting apartments, opening into each other, in one of which they had supped, stood between; all these rooms being situated in the projecting west wing, which they entirely filled. Thus closed the day which had carried to their destination the travellers from Thrace.
CHAPTER IX.
Next morning when they met at the jentaculum, or breakfast, there was a marvellous improvement in Agatha's looks. She had been the earliest out of bed; had seen from her window, under a brilliant sunshine, the beautiful landscape unroll itself in the various forms which the landlady had truly though inadequately described; and she then had run down into the garden.
In due time—that is, very soon afterward—she had been chased by the bees, had fled, screaming and laughing, with the hood of her ricinium drawn completely over the head by way of helmet against the terrible darts of her indignant pursuers, and had been received in the arms of Benigna, who had heard the cry of distress and had flown to the rescue, brandishing a long, reedy brush, like the mosquito brushes of modern times. Rallying in a bower of trellis-work covered with ivy, whence a wooden staircase led up to the first floor of the house, by way of a landing or platform, over which rose another bower clad in the same ivy mantle—facing round, I say, upon her enemy at the foot of this staircase, she had soon ventured once more into the garden with Benigna, and the two girls, jabbering and cackling much, had gathered a large nosegay of autumnal flowers. With this booty, which Benigna had made so big that Agatha could hardly hold it in her small and elegant hands, the latter damsel had returned to the bower, had seated herself upon a bench, and had begun to sort the flowers in the relative positions which best showed their tints. Here she relied upon gradation, there upon contrast. Her delicate Greek taste in the performance of this task drew exclamations of delight from Benigna.
"There!" the innkeeper's daughter would cry; "how pretty! That is the way! That so, and then that, and that! They look quite different now! Exactly! I never imagined it!"
When Agatha had finished the arrangement to her own satisfaction, an exploit which was nimbly achieved, "Now, Benigna," said she, with her pretty foreign accent, "sit down here; just do, and tell me all about every thing."
Benigna stared, and Agatha proceeded,
"So you are engaged to become the wife of a very good and handsome youth, who in himself is every thing that can be admired, except that, poor young man! he is not very courageous, I understood you to say. Now, that is not his fault, I suppose. How can he help feeling afraid if he does feel afraid?"
At this moment the voice of Crispina was heard calling her daughter to help in preparing the breakfast, and Benigna, whom Agatha's last words had thrown into some confusion, as the same topic had done the previous evening, made an excuse and ran away, with the light of roses vivid in her cheeks.