, as, again voluntarily blinded, she sailed back to
Gracias with Winthrop over the sunset-tinted water. "Did you notice that
place on Garda's left sleeve? But of course you didn't. Well, it was a
perfect miracle of patience, which Job himself couldn't have equalled
(and certainly the Thornes are as poor as Job, and Carlos might well be
the turkey); as black silk, or even black thread, would have shone--they
_will_ shine, you know, in spite of all you can do, even if you ink
them--she had actually used ravellings, and _alpaca_ ravellings--you
know what _they_ are! Don't you think it would be nicer to have that
sail out sideways, as it was when we came down, and go straight, instead
of slanting in this way back and forth across the river?"

Evert Winthrop, thus introduced, had received from the mistress of East
Angels an invitation to repeat his visit. He had repeated it several
times. It was easy to do this, as, in addition to the piratical little
craft already mentioned, he had engaged a saddle-horse, and was now
amusing himself exploring the old roads that led southward.

Upon returning from one of these rides he found awaiting him a letter
from the North. It was from his aunt, Mrs. Rutherford, and contained the
intelligence that she was coming southward immediately, having been
ordered to a warmer climate on account of the "threatenings of
neuralgia, that tiresome neuralgia, my dear boy, that makes my life such
a burden. I am so tired of Pau and Nice that, instead of crossing that
cold ocean again, I have suddenly made up my mind to come down and join
you under the blue sky you have discovered down there--Egypt, you say,
Egypt without the ruins; but as I am a good deal of a ruin myself just
now, I shall not mind that lack; in fact, can supply it in my own
person. My love to Betty Carew; I shall be delighted to see her again
after all these years. Margaret comes with me, of course, and we shall
probably follow this letter without much delay."

Winthrop was surprised. He knew that his aunt was fond of what she
patriotically called her "own country;" but he should have said that she
would not probably consider that there was any of it worth her personal
consideration south of Philadelphia, or, at the utmost, south of
Baltimore and Washington. This amiably blind lady was, however, a great
traveller, in her leisurely way she had taken long journeys across
Europe and the East; if she did not know the Mississippi, she knew