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I shall take heed to this hint." "Do so, Kate, and your good angel will doubtless inspire in me a suitable response." "But tell me now, Aunt Linny, who the living man was. Was he a real cousin?" "I may as well tell you, Kate, or you will get it from your 'familiar. You have heard of our rich cousin in Cuba, Henry Morrison?" "Oh, yes; I have heard grandfather speak of him.
But by an odd trick of fancy, the bridegroom, who looked very stately and happy, appeared with the china flower-pot containing the Button-Rose balanced on the end of his nose! Awaked by my own laughter at this comical sight, I opened my eyes and found Aunt Linny sitting on the bedside and laughing with me.
"Permit me," said he, smiling, "to present Miss Caroline Morrison, 'sole daughter of my house and heart." "But the stranger, the foreign lady?" inquired Aunt Linny, as she kissed and welcomed the child. "Why, this is she, this young Cuban! Whom else did you look for?" was the reply, in a tone of surprise, and, as it seemed to me, of slight vexation.
Lay the tea-table in the grape arbor, and then invite grandpapa to a feast of strawberries and cream." I hastily ornamented our rural banquet-hall with long branches of roses and honeysuckles in full bloom, stuck into the leafy roof. As we sat chatting and laughing over our simple treat, a humming-bird darted several times in and out. "A messenger!" whispered I to Aunt Linny.
A prettier one you never saw in France or Cuba, Miss Carrie, that's what papa calls you, I suppose?" "It used to be my name," said the little smiler; "but papa always calls me Linny now, because he thinks it sweeter." "What say you to the humming-bird now?" I whispered to my aunt, as we were a moment alone in the tea-room. "Kate, I wish you were fifty miles off at this moment!
I sat for a time in silence, lost in a delicious, confused reverie. "The Button-Rose was a gift from him, then?" were my first words. "What, Kate?" said Aunt Linny, now opening her large blue eyes with a strange look. "Did you give away the flower-pot too? That was so pretty! Whom did you give it to?" "Incredible!" she exclaimed, coloring, and with the strongest expression of surprise.
This letter quite cheered up Luke, who, in his first absence from home, naturally felt a little lonely at times. "Linny is a true friend," he said. "He is just as well off as Randolph, but never puts on airs. He is as popular as Randolph is unpopular. I wish I could go to Europe with him." Upon the earlier portions of Luke's journey to the Black Hills we need not dwell.
Aunt Linny, 'tis he! the carriage is coming up the avenue!" So saying, I threw down the telescope and flew to her room. "You are right, Kate, it must be he," said she, glancing through the window, and then following me quietly down stairs. The carriage stopped, and we all went down the steps to receive our long absent relative.
"First young love, parting gift, Cousin Harry proves fickle, Aunt Linny banishes the Button-Rose from her window, takes to books, and educating naughty nieces, and doing good to everybody, 'bearing to live, as more heroic than 'daring to die, in ten years gets so that she can speak of it with composure, as a lesson to romantic girls. So?"
"But just think, Aunt Linny if Ophelia, instead of going mad so prettily, and dying in a way to break everybody's heart, had soberly set herself to consider that there were as fine fish yet in the sea as ever were caught, and that it was best, therefore, to cheer up and wait for better times! Frightful!"
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