On the very first visit Stuart was allowed to make at the bedside of his wife, when he had kissed her with deep feeling, and had admired the twins to his heart’s content, she said to him: “Cleve, dear, of course our boy must be named John Cleve, after dear uncle and yourself. But our little girl? Will you please ask uncle if he will let us call her Clarice, after his own dear angel love?” “Well thought of, darling. I know he will be pleased. I will ask him as soon as I go downstairs,” warmly responded Cleve Stuart. “And you must go now, sir, if you please. She must be quiet and go to sleep if she can,” said Mrs. Pole from the eminence of her new authority. Stuart meekly bowed his head and obeyed. The result of Palma’s proposal was this: Early in the afternoon, when she had had a good sleep, had awakened and taken refreshment, and was resting in peace and bliss, the old gentleman came quietly into the room, sat down beside her, and said softly: “I thank you, my dear. May the Lord bless you, and may He bless your dear babes—little Clarice and John.” CHAPTER XXXII AN EARTHLY PARADISE Spring opens early on the southwestern section of Virginia, and leaves, flowers and birds come soon. Palma and her babies were out with the violets and the bluebirds. And no one could have more enjoyed the beautiful weather in this glorious scene than the city-bred girl. Even in April, the cup-shaped vale, shut in by green-wooded mountains, seemed a Garden of Eden, or the fairy “Valley of Calm Delights.” Stuart had taken to agricultural life as to his native element, and often declared his delight in it, and expressed his wonder how he, the descendant of a hundred generations of farmers, could have been contented to live in a city. Directly after breakfast every morning he mounted his horse and rode out afield to look after the laborers. Certainly, much of the theory and practice of farming he had to learn from his uncle; but he was an apt pupil. So apt, he said to Palma, that his learning seemed to him more like the recollection of forgotten knowledge than the acquisition of new ideas. Palma, for her part, loved to put her two babies in the double perambulator that had been brought from the nearest town for their use, and, attended by Hatty, wheel them out to the road that ran around the vale and was dotted with the log huts and little gardens of the negroes on the side next to the mountain. This was like a royal progress. Everywhere the young mother and children were greeted with joy by the colored women and girls in the cabins. On week days none but women and children could be found there; all the men were afield.