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Grace and Sylvia had wondered what the large basket contained, but in their interest over Flora's beautiful gifts, and their delight in her "owning up" to being the "ghost," they had quite forgotten about it. It was Flora who now pointed at it and said laughingly: "I've brought my dolls in that basket." "Molly and Polly will be glad enough to have company," Sylvia assured her.
Flora's tact and consideration in keeping the children away when the lovers could best be alone, and letting them in when the discussion was becoming useless and harassing, her cheerful smiles, her evening music that covered all sounds, her removal of all extra annoyances, were invaluable, and Margaret appreciated them, as, indeed, Flora took care that she should.
"You expect too much of your husband and children," she said one day, bluntly, to her sister. "I!" Flora's dimpled hands had flown to her breast like a wounded thing. "I! You're crazy! There isn't a more devoted wife and mother in the world. That's the trouble. I love them too much." "Well, then," grimly, "stop it for a change. That's half Eugene's nervousness your fussing over him. He's eighteen.
He trotted along so briskly with the little blue cart, that anybody could have told he was running away from Flora. Perhaps his supper was waiting for him, as Flora's was for her, and he was in a hurry to eat it. They went so fast in opposite directions that in a few minutes they were out of sight of each other. Flora was now glad to walk.
Anna's nose was a singularly long and straight nose; now if it had been Flora's nose that was out of joint! for Flora's nose turned up in a very odd way.
She was there, I was in her arms; she had crossed the sea, not to save her own life, but mine. And Flora had gone, and my dreams were true; and the breath and magnetic touch of love, which infused warm, sweet life into me, and seemed not Flora's, but Margaret's, were no illusion, and what more can I tell?
On reaching the house I had never so much as looked for the boy; I had simply gone straight to my room to change what I was wearing and to take in, at a glance, much material testimony to Flora's rupture. Her little belongings had all been removed. When later, by the schoolroom fire, I was served with tea by the usual maid, I indulged, on the article of my other pupil, in no inquiry whatever.
Sylvia wondered if Flora ever did anything for herself; for there seemed to be so many negro servants who were on the alert to wait upon all the white people at the "big house." "Come up to my room, girls, and rest until it's time to dress for supper," said Flora. Flora's room was just across the hall from the one where Grace and Sylvia were to sleep.
She attacked her nephew at once upon the subject, whose replies were at first wavering and evasive, till he caught Flora's eye, and then he answered with a dogged sort of resolution, exceedingly amusing to me who understood his position, and at last got quite cross with his aunt for persisting in her entreaties.
A whiff of dust showed where the battery ambled townward among roadside gardens, the Callender carriage spinning by it to hurry its three ladies and Mandeville far away to the city's lower end. At the column's head rode Irby in good spirits, having got large solace of Flora's society since we last saw her paired with Kincaid.
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