Adventure stories; Automobile travel -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"For all it is autumn elsewhere, here in this wonderful blue grass
land, it is spring again, a second spring. The autumn sunlight over
the woods and pastures is deeply, richly yellow. There are meadow
larks and off somewhere the tinkle of a cow bell. Oh, Ann, how good it
is to be alive!
"Ages ago, in that remote and barbarous past when I lived with a roof
above my head, there were times when every pulse of my body cried and
begged for life--for gypsy life and gypsy wind and the song of the
roaring river! Now, somehow, I feel that I have lived indeed--so fully
that a wonderful flood tide of peace and happiness flows strongly in my
veins. I am brown and happy. Each day I cook and tramp and fish and
swim and sleep--how I sleep with the leaves rustling a lullaby of
infinite peace above me! Would you believe that I lived for two days
and nights in a mountain cave? I did indeed, but Johnny was greatly
troubled. Aunt Agatha stuffed his head with commands.
"The South thrills and calls. After all, though I was born in the
Adirondacks, I am Southern, every inch of me. The Westfalls have been
Florida folk since the beginning of time.
"There is an interesting nomad in a picturesque suit of corduroy who
crosses my path from time to time with an eccentric music-machine.
Sometimes I see him gravely organ-grinding for a crowd of youngsters,
sometimes--with an innate courtliness characteristic of him--for a
white-haired couple by a garden gate. He is wandering about in search
of health. Oddly, his way lies, too, through Kentucky and Tennessee,
to Florida. He--and Ann, dear, this confidence of his I must beg you
to respect, as I know you will--is a Hungarian nobleman, picturesquely
disguised because of some political quarrel with his country. He
writes excellent verse in French and Latin, is a clever linguist, and
has a marvelous fund of knowledge about birds and flowers. Altogether
he is a cultured, courtly, handsome man whom I have found vastly
entertaining. Romantic, isn't it?
"A letter to Eadsville, Kentucky, will reach me if you write as soon as
this reaches you.
"Ever yours,
"Diane."
Let him who is more versed in the science of a nomad's mind than I, say
why there was no mention of the hay-camp!
Ann's answer came in course of time to Eadsville. As Ann talked in
sprightly italics, so was her letter made striking and emphatic by
numberless underlinings.
"How _very_ romantic!" ran a part of it. "I am _mad_ about your
nobleman! Isn't it _wonderful_ to have such unique and thrilling
adventures? I suppose you hung things up on the walls of the cave and
built a delightfully smoky fire and that the Hungarian--_bless_ his
heart!--trimmed his corduroy suit with an ancestral stiletto, and paid
his courtly respects to the beautiful gypsy hermit and fell
_desperately_ in love with her, as well he might. I would _myself_!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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