I could
only press her hand in parting for Grandpa, growing impatient, had
succeeded in clucking Fanny on again.
We drove along the river road, and, passing through the Indian
encampment, there were more good-byes exchanged by the roadside.
Then climbing up "Sandy Slope," beyond the settlement, we heard the
shrill "Hullo!" of a familiar voice, and looking back, saw Bachelor Lot
running after us very swiftly, his head destitute of covering, and his
little wizened face glowing red as the celestial Mars in the distance. He
looked like some odd, fantastic toy that had been wound up and set going.
So he came up with us, and trying to conceal his breathlessness in polite
little "hums and haws," delivered aside, he offered me a huge bouquet,
composed, I should think, of every sort of wild-flower available on the
Cape at that season, and showing, in its arrangement, marks of the most
arduous striving after artistic effect. In the other hand, he held out to
me a basket of large, selected boxberries.
I accepted the gifts with unaffected delight, and thanked Bachelor Lot
warmly. I looked back at him, trudging cheerfully homeward through the
sand, so withered and small, with the gray in his hair, and his coat so
much too long for him--back to the poor brown house, which no tender love
had ever hallowed, or merry waiting laugh made bright for him; and I
wondered, along his life's way which looked so sad and desolate, what
hidden wild flowers God had strewed for him, that he seemed always so
humbly cheerful and content, and brought his best of offerings with a
smile to bless the happier lot of others.
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