o
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--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 behind, but purple driftwood and bright seaweeds, 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 sea to sea. I was an artist, poor and painstaking. Christine
was my kind friend. She had brought me South because my cough was
troublesome, and here because Edward Bowne recommended the place. He and
three fellow sportsmen were down at the Madre Lagoon, farther south; I
thought it probable we should see him, without his three fellow
sportsmen, before very long.

"Who were the three women you have seen, Felipa?" said Christine.

"The grandmother, an Indian woman of the Seminoles who comes sometimes
with baskets, and the wife of Miguel of the island. But they are all
old, and their skins are curled: I like better the silver skin of the
senora."

Poor little Felipa lived on the edge of the great salt-marsh alone with
her grandparents, for her mot