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There was a low, muttering sound, then another, seemingly nearer; then came a dazzling blue flash of lightning that made all the party stationed at the dining-room window start back; and then came a long, rolling, rattling peal of thunder, that sounded as though it had come bellowing through great metal pipes; while before it had died away in the distance, splashing and plunging down came the rain in torrents, ploughing up the flower-beds, and making little rivers run along each side of the gravel-walks.
But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did not love her any longer; her flower-beds were plowed up and planted in corn; and the cottage that Stephen had built and she had furnished, that beloved cottage, was to let. She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all?
"Now let's get the flowers," said Dimple; "you are to choose just which you like best, Rock," she said, leading the way to the flower-beds. "The pansies are almost gone, but there are plenty of roses yet, and verbenas, and mignonette, and lots of things." "Now, Rock," she said, as they went along the paths, "you are not choosing the prettiest ones at all.
He was destined to see her again, that night under circumstances which he remembered to the end of his life. The rules of Netherwoods, in summer time, recalled the young ladies from their evening's recreation in the grounds at nine o'clock. After that hour, Alban was free to smoke his pipe, and to linger among trees and flower-beds before he returned to his hot little rooms in the village.
The Vicar had taken a step or two to the bay-window, where, with hands thrust within his trouser-pockets, he stood staring gloomily out on the bright flower-beds that, next to the comeliness and order of her ministering to the Church garnishing of the altar, lustration of the holy vessels, washing and mending of vestments, were the pride of Mrs Steele's life.
I made sure that before I should have done with him there would scarcely be a current form of words left me to be sick of; but meanwhile I could make surer still of my animosity to bustling ladies for whom he drew the water that irrigated their social flower-beds. I had a battle with Mrs.
On flew the bird over gardens filled with blossoming fruit-trees, trimly laid-out flower-beds, and gaily-painted arbors, across the frowning circlet of walls and towers that girdled the city, over narrow houses with high, pointed gables, and neat streets bordered with elm, poplar, linden and willow-trees, decked with the first green leaves of spring.
She uttered no words, however, but gently putting her arm around Mrs Askerton's waist, stood there close to her, looking out upon the cold wintry flower-beds not venturing to turn her eyes upon her companion. The motion of her arm was at first very gentle, but after a while she pressed it closer, and thus by degrees drew her friend to her with an eager, warm, and enduring pressure.
Among this there grew large quantities of sea-weed of the richest hues imaginable, and of the most graceful forms; while innumerable fishes blue, red, yellow, green, and striped sported in and out amongst the flower-beds of this submarine garden, and did not appear to be at all afraid of our approaching them.
A smug, close-shaven turf replaces the old-fashioned flower-beds and shrubbery, amid which I love to fancy sweet Peggy Arnold trailing her French brocades and flowered chintzes, her rosy ear attuned to the high-flown compliments of the men of fashion whom her beauty and her husband's lavish hospitality drew about her her husband the traitor who a few months afterward was flying, a detected felon, from justice, leaving his fair young wife, with her babe in her arms, to face the awful wrath of Washington.
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