"They are not lovely after bloom,--only the little
pink-streaked, budded bells, that hang so demurely. _Oui, da!_ I have
exchanged great queen magnolias for rues; what will you give me for
pomegranates and oleanders?"
"Are the old oleanders in the garden yet?" asked Mrs. Laudersdale.
"Not the very same. The hurricane destroyed those, years ago; these are
others, grand and rosy as sunrise sometimes."
"It was my Aunt Susanne who planted those, I have heard."
"And it was your daughter Rite who planted these."
"She buried a little box of old keepsakes at its foot, after her brother
had examined them,--a ring or two, a coin from which she broke and kept
one half"------
"Oh, yes! we found the little box, found it when Mr. Heath was in
Martinique, all rusted and moulded and falling apart, and he wears that
half of the coin on his watch-chain. See!"
Mrs. Laudersdale glanced up indifferently, but Mrs. Purcell sprang from
her elegant lounging and bent to look at her brother's chain.
"How odd that I never noticed it, Fred!" she exclaimed. "And how odd
that I should wear the same!" And, shaking her _chatelaine_, she
detached a similar affair.
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