Part 19 (2/2)
_Barefoot_, I tell ye!”
It was a forcible expression, yet Nannie was not quite rea.s.sured. She still demurred.
”But the play was the princ.i.p.al thing, you know.”
”The play? Well, I don't know,” said Miss Becky, thoughtfully. ”I don't know's I'm so terrible sot on the the_ett_er's I thought for.
I'd a good deal ruther hev you come over 'n do that sleep-walkin'
piece for me. I don't want nothin' better'n that. 'F I can see you act that once in a while, 'n' hev this here Garding of Eden to think about,--a founting playin' right in the house, 'n' all,--I ain't likely to want for amus.e.m.e.nt.”
The best bonnet was still very much askew, but the pleasant old face within, whose wrinkles had resumed their accustomed grooves, was irradiated with a look of unmistakable beat.i.tude; and somehow it was borne in upon Nannie that her theatre party had been a success after all.
OLIVIA'S SUN-DIAL
CHAPTER I
OLIVIA'S SUN-DIAL
”It's all we need to make it the prettiest garden in Dunbridge.”
”Hm! And why must we have the prettiest garden in Dunbridge?”
”Why shouldn't we?”
Here was a deadlock--a thing quite shockingly out of place in a garden, and one's own particular garden at that!
Olivia Page could make almost anything grow, as she had abundantly proved, but even her garden-craft could hardly suffice for the setting of a sun-dial on a pedestal of snow-white marble over there where the four triangular rose-beds converged to a circle, and where the south sun would play on it all day long.
For a year Olivia had dreamed of this, and, since she was not a churlishly reticent young person, it was not the first intimation her father had received of her desire. Not until to-day, however, had she asked outright for what she wanted.
”I wish you would say something more,” she remarked, glancing sidewise at the professor's deeply corrugated countenance, which, for all their intimacy, was sometimes difficult to decipher. She had heard of girls who could twist their parents round their fingers; she wondered how they did it.
The two were sitting on the white half-circle of a bench that stood at the west boundary of the old tennis-court, just where one end of the net used to be staked up. Excepting for that break, three sides of the garden were fenced in by the high wire screen originally designed to keep the tennis b.a.l.l.s within bounds, and now doing duty as a trellis over which a luxuriant woodbine clambered, waving its reddening tendrils in the light September breeze. Wide flowerbeds bordered the entire court, the central turf being broken only by the cl.u.s.ter of rose-beds at the further end. From the white bench one looked across the gra.s.s to a broad flight of veranda steps, flanked on the right by a ma.s.s of white boltonia, while on the left a superb growth of New England asters reared their st.u.r.dy heads.
The garden had been a great success this year, quite the admiration of the neighbourhood. Really, Papa must be proud of it, and it was all Olivia's doing. Who would ever guess that it had had its modest beginnings in half a dozen tin cracker-boxes with holes bored in the bottoms, where, in March, two years ago, she had planted queer little brown seeds as hard as pebbles, which Nature had straightway taken in hand, softening and expanding them down there in the dark, till they came alive, and began feeling their way up to meet the sun. Ah, the bliss of seeing those first tiny shoots turn into stems and leaflets, ready to play their part in the great spring awakening! Would Olivia ever love any flowers quite as she had loved those first seedlings, especially a certain pentstemon, which blossomed ”white with purple spots,” exactly as the seed-catalogue had promised?
Yes, the garden was a great success, and just now it was at one of its prettiest moments, gay with autumn colours; the rudbeckia in its glory, and the great pink blossoms of the hibiscus spreading their skirts for all the world like ladies in an old-time minuet, while over yonder the soldier spikes of the flame-flower threatened to set the woodbine afire. Olivia loved the Latin names, but somehow ”tritonia”
did not seem to express those spikes of burning colour. And the roses!
How lovely those late hybrids were! Why, the way that Margaret d.i.c.kson drooped her head above the pansies, still blooming freely at her feet, was enough to melt the heart of a Salem gibraltar! A pity that the professor's attention seemed for the moment to be riveted upon the toe of his boot!
”I wish you would say something more,” Olivia repeated.
”Something different, you mean,” and Doctor Page smiled, benignly and stubbornly.
”For instance, you might tell me why you are opposed to it.”
”You wouldn't understand.”
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