"I have more faith in sunshine," interrupted Rosa, a tinge of
contempt in her smile and accent. "Or--to drop metaphors, at which
I always bungle--it is my belief that it is easy for happy people to
be good. All this talk about the sweetness of crushed blossoms,
throwing their fragrance from the wounded part, and the riven
sandal-tree, and the blessed uses of adversity, is outrageous
balderdash, according to my doctrine. A buried thing is but one
degree better than a dead one. What it is the fashion of poets and
sentimentalists to call perfume, is the odor of incipient decay."
"You are illustrating your position by means of my poor oriental
pearl," remonstrated Mabel, playfully, wresting the hand that was
beating the life and whiteness out of the floweret upon the marble
top of the beaufet. "Take this hardy geant de batailles, instead. My
bouquet must have a cluster of pearls for a heart."
"What a fierce crimson!" Frederic remarked upon the widely-opened
rose Miss Tazewell received in place of the delicate bud. "That must
be the 'hue angry, yet brave,' which, Mr. George Herbert asserts,
'bids the rash gazer wipe his eye.'"
"More poetical nonsense!" said Rosa, deliberately tearing the bold
"geant" to pieces down to the bare stem, "unless he meant to be
comic, and intimate that the gazer was so rash as to come too near
the bush, and ran a thorn into the pupil."
No one answered, except by the indulgent smile that usually greeted
her sallies, howeve? absurd, among those accustomed to the spoiled
child's vagaries.
Mabel was making some leisurely additions to her bouquet in the
shape of ribbon grass and pendent ivy sprays, coaxing these with
persuasive touches to trail over the edge and entwine the pedestal
of the salver on which her bowl was elevated; her head set slightly
on one side, her lips apart in a smile of enjoyment in her work and
in herself. It was a picture the lover studied fondly--one that hung
forever thereafter in his gallery of mental portraits. Beyond a pair
of fine gray eyes, the pliant grace of her figure and the buoyant
carriage of youth, health, and a glad heart, Mabel's pretensions to
beauty were comparatively few, said the world. Frederic Chilton had,
nevertheless, fallen in love with her at sight, and considered her,
now, the handsomest woman of his acquaintance. Her dress was a
simple lawn--a sheer white fabric, with bunches of purple grass
bound up with yellow wheat, scattered over it; her hair was lustrous
and abundant, and her face, besides being happy, was frank and
intelligent, with wonderful mobility of expression. In temperament
and sentiment; in capacity for, and in demonstration of affection,
she suited Frederic to the finest fibre of his mind and heart. He,
for one, did not carp at Aunt Rachel's declaration that they were
intended to spend time and eternity together.