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The sense of surrounding danger with which we laid down that night upon our beds of fern beneath the Aoa, continued to press darkly upon our minds even in sleep, and awake us at an early hour to confront anew, the perplexities and terrors of our situation.
She must have felt an almost irresistible temptation to sit for a moment on the cool, shady front porch, with its green-painted flower boxes, its hanging fern baskets and the catalpa tree looking boskily down upon it. But she never did. She had an almost savage energy and determination.
A hum upon the night-wind, lost, ever and anon, in wailing gust, yet a hum that never ceased; a sound that grew and grew, loud and ever more loud until it seemed to fill the very night, a dreadful sound, ominous and threatening, a sound to shake the boldest heart the ring and tramp of an armed, oncoming multitude. Now, lying amid the leaves and fern with Cnut and the small man Prat beside him.
"In this knowledge our people rejoice! They are filled with an unselfish desire to spread the good news broadcast! Can you, my dear Fern! imagine for them, a purpose in life more noble or more worthy?" "No, my dear Fillmore! I cannot! So eloquently have you stated the case, that the outlook for the future is glorious!
The poor wretch staggered and put his hands to his head, then stumbled and fell heavily down. Now the fight became general and confused. All about among the fern and the flowers, among the lemanshrubs, and the tangled vines, men fought, and fired, and struck, and cursed; while the little brown bandiroots scudded swiftly away, and the deadly snake hid himself in his darkest lair, affrighted.
So it was no wonder that after a minute the two soft, gentle eyes disappeared behind one of the great green leaves of the fern. Peter gave a great sigh. Then he remembered how rude he had been to stare so. "I I beg your pardon," said Peter in his politest manner, which is very polite indeed, for Peter can be very polite when he wants to be. "I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to frighten you.
The underwood is no less picturesque. The red-spotted leaves and redder berries of the old thorns, the scarlet festoons of the bramble, the tall fern of every hue, seem to vie with the brilliant mosaic of the ground, now covered with dead leaves and strewn with fir-cones, now, where a little glade intervenes, gay with various mosses and splendid fungi.
I could wish though, for aesthetic reasons, that our English lanes grew tropical Begonias, Coraline, and a peculiarly attractive Polypody fern, similar to ours, except for the young growths being rose-pink. Between Dry Harbour and Brown's Town there is one succession of fine country-places, derelict for the most part now, but remnants of the great days before King Sugar was dethroned.
"'Old and ugly! shrieked the Dowager. 'Tear her wig off! Scrub the paint off her face! Flatten her nose on the pavement! Saw off her legs and give her no crinoline! Take her out bathing, I say, and bring her home in a wheelbarrow with fern roots on the top of her.
Where is she?" the telltale tinsel scarf flapping frenziedly behind her, flapping flapping till at last, between one high, garnished shelf and another it twined its vampirish chiffon around the delicate fronds of a huge potted fern!
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