And so the days drew into March, and still we lingered. Bill, persuaded by neighbors that even May was bearable in Cuba, spoke of staying at least until the middle of April. I did not care. Father was still in Canada, and Green Hill would have been empty without him. It was a Lotus-eater's life and I was content. The sight of the great, purple orchids, fragile and almost unbelievably beautiful, clinging to the palm-trees, was enough to keep me happy for a whole day. To look from the windows through the luxuriance of the bourginvilla vines to the golden-freighted orange-trees was a rare delight. To see the cane-fields in the wind, the hibiscus under a noon sun, the peacocks pacing the white walks before sunset, was to live a poem. If, now and then, on still nights, a restlessness and nostalgia for something keener, sharper, something unnamable and unknown, would seize me, it would vanish again before the breathless, expectant dawn. And, if one grew melancholy, there was always Arthur to turn to--a bird, philosophic and unexpected, who had developed a feud with Wiggles. To watch the two of them, Arthur resplendent and mocking on his perch, Wiggles, a black lump of outrage dashing up and down before the door of the wire cage, which was as big as a small room, was a sight to dispel dull care. And from someone, Arthur had learned endearing names. "Pretty darling!" he would articulate, his head flirtatiously to one side, his beady eyes fixed on mine, his claw extended with quite the grand manner. And, when, nettled by his tone, I would advance to the cage, he would slide off to the other end of his perch and demand bleakly, "Coffee! Gol dern! Bow wow wow!" a climax that never failed to arouse Wiggles to frenzy. And so, between beauty and laughter, firelight and sunshine, we trod, all unknowing, perilously close to tragedy. CHAPTER XII CACTUS Twisted, deformed, and stretching thorny hands To mock the golden beauty of the South, Embodied Evil, set in glowing lands Like some black curse within a lovely mouth, The sullen cactus, lone and brooding, stands. Yet Earth, All-Just, All-Wise, All-Tender, deems Her crippled offspring worthy still to bear The crown of perfect blossoms: as beseems, Some dark misshapen souls, in secret wear The splendid Flower of their silent Dreams! It was, of course, the tall cactus, to the left of the house, which set me to singing. For a long time it had affronted me. Pallid, sickly, abnormal, flowering suddenly into crimson blossom, it was for me, an actual blot on the lovely landscape gardening of the Palms. But one day I said something of this to Bill, and he said, "It may start out in ugliness, but it's rooted in strength and ends in beauty, doesn't it?"