look for
you."

"Yes, I know; I am late to-night, I will come in now."

"There's no occasion for haste," Celestine answered, bestowing a short
glance of general inspection upon the lagoon, the tinted sky, and the
stiff figure of the crane. "What a pagan bird that crane is!"

"You hear, Carlos?" said Margaret.

But Carlos was never conscious of the existence of Celestine, he kept
his attentions exclusively for his southern friends; the only exception
was Margaret, whose presence he was now beginning to tolerate.

"You don't call that mocking-bird a pagan, do you?" Margaret asked.

"I don't care much for mocking-birds _myself_," Celestine responded.
"Give me a bobolink, Miss Margaret! As for them leaves you've got
there--all the sweet-smelling things in Florida--I'd trade the whole for
one sniff of the laylocks that used to grow in our backyard when I was a
girl."

"Why, Minerva, you're homesick."

"No, Miss Margaret, no; I've got my work to attend to here; no, I ain't
homesick: you get home knocked out of you when you've traipsed about to
such places as Nice, Rome, Egypt, and the dear knows where. But if
anybody was really going to _live_ somewheres (I don't mean just
_staying_, as we're doing now), talk about choosing between this and New
England--my!"

Margaret rose.

"There's no occasion for haste if you don't want to go in just yet,"
said Celestine; "she isn't alone, I saw Dr. _Kirby_ ride up just as I
came away. Well--she's got on that maroon silk wrapper."

"Nobody has such taste as you have, Celestine," said Margaret, kindly.
"My aunt is always becomingly dressed."

There was a little movement of the New England woman's mouth, which was
almost a grimace. In reality it expressed her pride and pleasure--though
no one would have suspected it. It was the only acknowledgment she made.

Dr. Kirby was sitting with his esteemed friend when Margaret entered.

His esteemed friend's feeling for Margaret now seemed to be always a
tender compassion.

"My dear child, I fear you have been out too long, you look pale," was
the present manifestation of it.

"I have often thought what a variation it would make in the topics of my
friends," said Margaret, as she drew off her gloves, "if I should take
to painting my cheeks a little; think of it--a touch of rouge, now, and
the whole conversation would be altered."

"I am sure that, for artistic purposes at least," said Dr. Kirby,
gallantly, "rouge would be totall