The End of a Coil. Warner Susan
go over the gardens in the morning?"
"I am sure we shall return home immediately after breakfast."
"Before breakfast then? Why not?"
This plan went into effect. It was an occasion of great pleasure to both parties. No better time could be for seeing the utmost beauty of the flowers; and Dolly wandered in what was to her a wilderness of an enchanted land. Breakfast was forgotten; and young St. Leger was so charmed with this perfectly fresh, simple, and lively nature, that he for his part was willing to forget it indefinitely. Dolly's utter delight, and her intelligent, quick apprehension, the sparkle in her eye, the happy colour in her cheeks, made her to his fancy the rarest thing he had ever seen. The gardener, who was summoned to give information of which his young master was not possessed, entertained quite the same opinion; and thanks to his admiring gratification Dolly went back to the house the possessor of a most superb bouquet, which he had cut for her and offered through Mr. St. Leger.
There were some significant half smiles around the breakfast table, as the young pair and the flowers made their appearance. St. Leger braved them; Dolly did not see them. Her sweet eyes were full of the blissful enchantment still. Immediately after breakfast, as she had said, her father took leave.
Mrs. Copley had awaited their coming in a mood half irritation, half gratification. The latter conquered when she saw Dolly.
"Now tell me all about it!" she said, before Dolly even could take off her bonnet.
"She went to the races," said Mr. Copley.
"That's a queer place for Dolly to go, Mr. Copley."
"Not at all. Everybody goes that can go."
"I think it's a queer place for young ladies to go," persisted the mother.
"It is a queer place enough for anybody, if you come to that; but no worse for them than for others; and it is they make the scene so pretty as it is."
"I can't imagine how there should be anything pretty in seeing horses run to death!" said Mrs. Copley.
"I just said it is the pretty girls that give the charm," said her husband. "Though I can see some beauty in a fine horse, and in good riding; and they understand riding, those Epsom jockeys."
"Jockeys!" his wife repeated. "I don't want to hear you talk about jockeys, Mr. Copley."
"I am not going to, my dear. I give up the field to Dolly."
"Mother, the first thing was the place. It is a most beautiful place."
"The race-ground?"
"No, no, mother; Mr. St. Leger's place. 'The Peacocks,' they call it."
"What do they give it such a ridiculous name for?"
"I don't know. Perhaps they used to have a great many peacocks. But the place is the most beautiful place I ever saw. Mother, we were half an hour driving from the lodge at the park gate to the house."
"The road so bad?"
"So long, mother; think of it; half an hour through the park woods, until we carne out upon the great lawn dotted with the noblest trees you ever saw."
"Better than the trees in Boston common? I guess not," said Mrs. Copley.
"Those are good trees, mother, but nothing to these. These are just magnificent."
"I don't see why fine trees cannot grow as well on American ground as on English," said Mrs. Copley incredulously.
"Give them time enough," put in her husband.
"Time!"
"Yes. We are a new country, comparatively, my dear. These old oaks here have been growing for hundreds of years."
"And what should hinder them from growing hundreds of years over there? I suppose the ground is as old as England; if Columbus didn't discover it all at once."
"The ground," said Mr. Copley, eyeing the floor between his boots, – "yes, the ground; but it takes more than ground to make large trees. It takes good ground, and favouring climate, and culture; or at least to be let alone. Now we don't let things alone in America."
"I know you don't," said his wife. "Well, Dolly, go on with your story."
"Well, mother, – there were these grand old trees, and beautiful grass under them, and cattle here and there, and the house showing in the distance. I did not like the house so very much, when we came to it; it is not old; but it is exceedingly handsome, and most beautifully furnished. I never had such a room in my life, as I have slept in these two nights."
"And yet you don't like it!" put in Mr. Copley.
"I like it," said Dolly slowly. "I like all the comfort of it; but I don't think it is very pretty, father. It's very new."
"New!" said her father. "What's the harm of a thing's being new? And what is the charm of its being old?"
"I don't know," said Dolly thoughtfully; "but I like it. Then, mother, came the dinner; and the dinner was like the house."
"That don't tell me anything," exclaimed Mrs. Copley. "What was the house like?"
"Mother, you go first into a great hall, set all round with marble figures – statues – and with a heavy staircase going up at one side. It's all marble. But oh, the flower garden is lovely!"
"Well, tell me about the house," said Mrs. Copley. "And the dinner. Who was there?"
"I don't know," said Dolly; "quite a company. There were one or two foreign gentlemen; a count somebody and a baron somebody; there was an English judge, and his wife, and two or three other ladies and gentlemen."
"How did you like the gentlemen, Dolly?" her father asked here.
"I had hardly anything to do with them, except the two Mr. St. Legers."
"How did you like them? I suppose, on your principle, you would tell me that you liked the old one?"
"Never mind them," said Mrs. Copley; "go on about the dinner. What did you have?"
"Oh, everything, mother; and the most beautiful fruit at dessert; fruit from their own hothouses; and I saw the hothouses, afterwards. Most beautiful! the purple and white grapes were hanging in thick clusters all over the vines; and quantities of different sorts of pines were growing in another hothouse. I had a bunch of Frontignacs this morning before breakfast, father; and I never had grapes taste so good."
"Yes, you must have wanted something," said Mr. Copley; "wandering about among flowers and fruit till ten o'clock without anything to eat!"
"Poor Mr. St. Leger!" said Dolly. "But he was very kind. They were all very kind. If they only would not drink wine so!"
"Wine!" Mrs. Copley exclaimed.
"It was all dinner time; it began with the soup, and it did not end with the fruit, for the gentlemen sat on drinking after we had left them. And they had been drinking all dinner time; the decanters just went round and round."
"Nonsense, Dolly!" her father said; "you are unaccustomed to the world, that is all. There was none but the most moderate drinking."
"It was all dinner time, father."
"That is the custom of gentlemen here. It is always so. Tell your mother about the races."
"I don't like the races."
"Why not?"
"Well, tell me what they were, at any rate," said Mrs. Copley. "It is the least you can do."
"I don't know how to tell you," said Dolly. "I will try. Imagine a great flat plain, mother, level as far as the eye can see. Imagine a straight line marked out, where the horses are to run; and at the end of it a post, which is the goal, and there is the judges' stand. All about this course, on both sides, that is towards the latter part of the course, fancy rows of carriages, drawn up as close as they can stand, the horses taken out; and on these carriages a crowd of people packed as thick as they can find room to sit and stand. They talk and laugh and discuss the horses. By and by you hear a cry that the horses have set off; and then everybody looks to see them coming, with all sorts of