CHAPTER III.

VIOLETS AND ROSES.


A few days passed by, and there came a letter from papa saying that
mamma was feeling better. This was very delightful to the little girls
and Johnnie, though they had had a talk before it came about the duty of
being sorrowful under the circumstances. It happened this way: they were
outdoors playing May Queen.

"I never saw anything so sweet as these violets," cried Edith, in a
rapture. They were as sweet as they could be, little English violets,
white as snow, and perfuming the air. The flowers had come to Virginia
early in the new spring, and already there were early roses, slender
lilies of the valley, with tiny cups to catch the dewdrops, and the
fragrant yellow jasmine flinging its golden bells over every roadside
fence and tree. Old Uncle Moses had taken the children to the woods, and
there they had seen the jasmine in its glory, and the white stars of the
dogwood shining through the green branches far and near.

"'Pears like," said Uncle Moses, after one of these expeditions, "'pears
like God must love posies, de way he scatter dem roun' dis yer land."

For all that Miss Josephine had been left at home, the little girls had
not been obliged to live without a doll. Kind Aunt Maria had given them
each one soon after their arrival. Out in the garden, then, with the
dollies, Luce full of enthusiasm, and barking and rolling like an
animated puff-ball, or else sitting up as straight as a judge, they were