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It was Sunday afternoon; or, to date it by an epochal event, the day after Jack's alfalfa crop had fallen before the mower. Mary was seated on the bench under the avenue of umbrella-trees reading a thin edition of Marcus Aurelius bound in flexible leather. Of late she had developed a fondness for the more austere philosophers.
"No," he answered, "not just yet. It is very cool here under the umbrella-trees, isn't it? I have walked all the way from the Galways and I'll rest a while, if I may." He was no longer the play cavalier in overornamented chaparejos and cart-wheel spurs, but a lame fellow in overalls, who was hitching toward her on crutches, his cowpuncher hat held by the brim and flopping with every step.
Another fig envelops some of its branches, two umbrella-trees cling stubbornly to its sides, a pandanus palm grows comfortably at the base of a limb, tons of staghorn, bird's-nest, polypodium, and other epiphytal ferns, have licence to flourish, orchids hang decoratively, and several shrubs spring aspiringly among its roots. But the big tree still asserts its individuality.
Jack took each step as if he were apprehensive of disturbing the quiet Midway of the avenue of palms ran a cross avenue, and at the meeting-point was a circle, which evidently waited till the oranges and the olives should pay for a statue and surrounding benches. Over the breadth of the cross avenue lay the glossy canopy of the outstretched branches of umbrella-trees.
"It will be all right!" he called out to the crowd in his yard; for the others who had met him at the station were waiting for him there. "Bob, those umbrella-trees could shade a thin, short man now, even if he didn't hug the trunk! Firio has done well, hasn't he?" he concluded, after he had walked through the garden and surveyed the fields and orchards in fond comparison as to progress.
The smaller are made up of confused masses of granite, for the most part so overgrown with fig trees, plumy palms, milkwoods, umbrella-trees, quandongs, eugenias, hibiscus bushes, bananas and lawyer vines, as to be unexplorable without a scrub-knife; for the soil among the rocks is soft and spongy, the purest of vegetable mould, and encourages luxurious growth.
But she could see well enough out of the corners to know that his glances had a kind of hungry joy and a promise of some new demonstration in his attitude toward her. She must watch that barrier very shrewdly. "Look at my hedge!" he went on. "It is knee-high already, and my umbrella-trees cast enough shade for anybody, if he will wrap himself around the trunk. But such things are ornamental.
A table of roughly planed boards painted green and green rattan chairs were in keeping with the restful effect, while the world without was aglare with light. Here Mary had brought her sewing for the afternoon. She was working so intently that she had not heard his approach. He had paused just as his line of vision came flush with the trunks of the umbrella-trees.
Butterflies which have feasted among the umbrella-trees on the beach and on the edge of the jungle flit about the garden and almost invariably visit the red but nectarless acalypha.
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