shade of gold, as her clear gray eyes had not one shade of blue. Her
small, straight, rose-leaf lips parted over small, dazzlingly white
teeth, and the outline of her face in profile reminded you of an etching
in its distinctness, although it was by no means perfect according to
the rules of art. Still, what a comfort it was, after the blurred
outlines and smudged profiles many of us possess--seen to best
advantage, I think, in church on Sundays, crowned with flower-decked
bonnets, listening calmly serene to favorite ministers, unconscious of
noses! When Christine had finished her laugh--and she never hurried
anything, but took the full taste of it--she stretched out her arm
carelessly and patted Felipa's curly head. The child caught the
descending hand and kissed the long white fingers.

It was a wild place where we were, yet not new or crude--the coast of
Florida, that old-new land, with its deserted plantations, its skies of
Paradise, and its broad wastes open to the changeless sunshine. The old
house stood on the edge of the dry land, where the pine barren ended and
the salt marsh began: in front curved the tide-water river that seemed
ever trying to come up close to the barren and make its acquaintance,
but could not quite succeed, since it must always turn and flee at a
fixed hour, like Cinderella at the ball, leaving not a silver slipper,
but purple driftwood and bright sea-weeds, brought in from the Gulf
Stream outside. A planked platform ran out into the marsh from the edge
of the barren, and at its end the boats were moored; for although at
high tide the river was at our feet, at low tide it was far away out in
the green waste somewhere, and if we wanted it we must go and seek it.
We did not want it, however: we let it glide up to us twice a day with
its fresh salt odors and flotsam of the ocean, and the rest of the time
we wandered over the barrens or lay under the trees looking up into the
wonderful blue above, listening to the winds as they rushed across from