Chapter III

"She wound around her fingers
Her locks of jetty hair;
And brought them into graceful curl
About her forehead fair."

Alice remained closeted in her little room, eating but a morsel of the dinner brought her by Thisbe, till night-fall, when the woman again appeared, and said,

"Mistress says, if Miss Alice has made herself presentable, she can attend her in the family sitting-room in half an hour."

Alice bowed to this message, and said she would be pleased to meet her aunt and cousins at the time specified. The woman paused a moment, and then asked timidly,

"Would not Miss Alice like a waitin'-maid sent to 'sist her in dressin'?"

"No, thank you," returned Alice, smiling. "I am accustomed to wait on myself."

The woman opened wide her shiny eyes, and exclaiming, "Massy! who ever heard the like?" retired with a courtesy.

Alice laughed quite heartily after she was gone. "The idea of a black girl to help me put on a plain muslin frock, and twist my ringlets into a little smoother curl!" said she. "I could array myself to meet a queen in ten minutes."

Thus speaking, she took from her trunk a snowy India muslin frock. It fastened low over her finely-formed shoulders, and a chain of red coral round her neck, with bracelets of the same material on her delicate wrists, completed her toilet. With her own rare grace of motion, she glided down the hall stairs, and into the presence of her aunt, who rose from the soft-cushioned chair in which she had been reclining, with an expression half terror, half anger, distorting her features.

"Mercy, mercy! Another trial to my weak nerves!" she exclaimed. "Thisbe, my nerve-reviver instantly!"

The servant flew from the room, and returned with a small, silver-headed vial, which the lady applied to her nostrils, and soon grew calm.

Alice stood all the while dismayed at the confusion her sudden entrance had occasioned, and the three cousins, perched on cushioned stools, gazed on her with curious eyes. The aunt at length got sufficiently revived to speak.

"Now, Miss Orville, my long-since-departed brother's only child, advance to embrace your affectionate aunt!"

Alice came forward with a gentle, inimitable grace, and, extending her hand, said,

"How do you do, aunt? I am sorry to have made you so ill."

"That is right, Miss Orville! you should be so. My nerves are delicate; the least disturbance sets them all a tremble, and no one understands my nerves; no one appreciates my nerves. Now I will present you to your cousins. I call my daughters my three jewels. The eldest, and belle and beauty, as we call her, is not at home, being in the city of Mobile at present. Her name is Isadora Gabriella Celestina Camford. You will behold her in due time, I trust. My second child is a son. I call him my brilliant among my jewels. Daniel Henry Thomas Lewis John Camford come forward to greet Miss Alice Orville."

The lad thus called on, rose, stretched himself, and coming up to Alice said, "How d'ye do, cous.?"

The young girl received his extended hand kindly, and, after gazing for the space of a full minute straight in her face, he resumed his seat.

"Very well done, my brilliant son!" said the mother. "Next in order comes my second jewel. Now Dulcinea Ophelia Ambrosia Josephine, my adored remembrance of Don Quixote, Shakspeare, the Naiads, and the mighty Napoleon, advance to greet your cousin!"

And this living remembrance of the immortal dead sprang from her stool, and, running to Alice, threw both arms round her neck, and, kissing her on either cheek, exclaimed, "O, Cousin Alice! I'm glad you are come, for now I shall have some one good-natured enough to talk to and go to school with every day; for, by your pretty, angel-face, I know you are a sweet-tempered thing."

During this volubly-uttered harangue, the mother was making helpless gestures to Thisbe for the nerve-reviver; but the graceless wench never heeded one of them, so intently was she gazing with distended eyes and gaping mouth on Miss Pheny's somewhat boisterous, but really warm-hearted greeting of her Cousin Alice. Pheny was a universal favorite among the servants, "for that she was a smilin', good-natured young lady, and not a bit nervousy," as they declared.

At length poor Mrs. Camford uttered a faint cry, which called Thisbe's attention back to the spot from whence it never should have strayed,--her mistress' cushioned chair,--and she rushed in a sort of frenzy for the nerve-reviver, and applied it to the trembling lady's nostrils; whereupon that delicately-constituted specimen of the genus feminine uttered a stentorian shriek and flounced about the room like an irate porcupine, greatly to the terror of Alice, who had never witnessed such a scene before. But neither the brilliant son nor jewel daughters seemed in the least alarmed, and in a few moments the mother regained possession of her chair and senses, when her first act of sanity was to hurl the bottle Thisbe had applied to her nostrils at the poor woman's head with such force, that, had she not dodged the missile, it must have inflicted a severe contusion.

"There, you blundering black brute!" she exclaimed, "see if you'll bring your master's hartshorn headache-dispenser again, when I send for my nerve-reviver. The idea of a delicate woman like me having a bottle of hartshorn bobbed under her nose! The wonder is I am not dead; yes, dead by your hand, you brutal black nigger! But where was I in my presentation? O, I recollect! That mad-cap girl, my second jewel, so horrified me. I dare not yet refer to it lest my nerves become spasmodic again. Pray excuse her, Miss Orville, and I will proceed to my youngest, my infant-jewel! Eldora Adelaide Maria Suzette, greet your cousin, love, as you ought."

The child arose, made a stiff bend of her shoulders, and said, "I hope to see you well, Miss Alice Orville."

Alice returned her salute with a graceful courtesy, and all resumed their seats.

"Now," said Mrs. Camford, "this dreaded ceremony of presentation is over, I hope we may get on well together. I'm desirous, Miss Orville, that you should commence tuition at the seminary immediately. I shall have no pains spared to afford you a fashionable education. As my deceased brother's only child, I would have this much done at my own expense. I always told Ernest, though he married a poor girl from the north, and went off there to live with her, much against the wishes of our parents, that I would never see a child of his suffer."

"I have never suffered, madam!" said Alice, quickly.

"For food and clothes I suppose not, Miss Orville," said Mrs. Camford, loftily; "but my nerves are all shattered by this long confab, and I will now retire, leaving you young people to cultivate each other's acquaintance. Thisbe, carry me to my private apartment!"

And Thisbe lifted her delicate mistress in her arms, and tugged her from the room; an operation that reminded one, not of a "mountain laboring to bring forth a mouse," but of a mouse laboring to bring forth a mountain.

Days and weeks past by, and Alice was not so unhappy as she feared she would be from her first experience. The "belle and beauty" returned from the city of Mobile, under escort of Mr. Gilbert, who proved to be the fair Celestina's _fiancée_. And Wayland Morris was a frequent visitor. He often invited Alice to walk over different portions of the city. There was an old ruinous French chateau to which they were wont to direct their steps almost every Saturday evening when the weather was pleasant; and to walk with Morris, gaze into his deep blue eyes, and listen to his eloquent voice as he recited to her old tales and legends of long ago from his well-stored, imaginative brain, was becoming more than life to Alice. Perhaps she did not quite know it then. Whoever knows the value of a blessing till it is withdrawn? Ah! and when we wake some morning to find our hearts left desolate, how earnestly and tearfully do we beg its return, with fervent promises never to drive it from our bosoms, or scorn and slight it again! But does it ever come? Alas, no!